Has Larry Summers Been Denied Academic Freedom?

The University of California took heat last month when it “disinvited” Harvard’s former president, Lawrence H. Summers, to speak at the university. Many in academe cried censorship. Now two faculty members — John Cary Sims, a professor of law at the University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law, in Sacramento, and Deb Niemeier, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California at Davis — are responding.

“This controversy has nothing to do with academic freedom,” they write on The Sacramento Bee’s Web site. Summers, they say, was invited to speak by a member of the Board of Regents at a private dinner party, where faculty members had no chance for input. After the regents heard from university critics, they withdrew what was simply a private invitation.

“Sophistry,” says the critic Stanley Kurtz at the National Review’s online corner. “Depriving Summers of a podium because he once tentatively raised one partial, possible explanation for male/female differences in academic hiring sends a chilling message to the entire country about forbidden topics of debate on America’s college campuses.”

Last month, the American Association of University Professors seemed to agree when it criticized the university for canceling the lecture.