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Volume CCXXXVI, Number 116  March 1, 2006 

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Dispatches from the War Fronts

V-S DAY!
Joy flows like sherry in University Hall;
Summers surrenders unconditionally

By A. Lawrence Lowell
Yard Correspondent

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts – At 1200, Cambridge War Time, Tuesday, February 21, 2006, the long-anticipated official communiqué was finally issued from the nerve center of Harvard University: the offices of the Corning Glass Works in East Cupcake, New York [Confirm place – Ed.]. The message: Harvard President Lawrence Summers had surrendered unconditionally to the combined forces of the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences, ending a five-year war for control of the Yard.

The struggle had raged for years, pitting irascible supremo Lawrence Summers against a ragtag band of overinflated gasbags operating under the catchall name of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). For years, Yard denizens cowered under the nightly attacks from armored gasbags cris-crossing the Cambridge sky. Faithful Spy readers have been treated to regular war correspondence, like this February 2005 dispatch filed by an intrepid Spy reporter stationed in a dugout next to Massachusetts Hall.

During the early years of the conflict, few gave the scatter-brained [Surely, scattered? – Ed.] FAS forces much of a chance against the ruthless Summers and his Corporation allies. Experts said that years of soft living and placid self-absorption had sapped the FAS of any will to resist. But, in a masterful display of guerilla warfare, it's the FAS troops, not Summers, who emerged as victorious.

Summers had been widely reviled by the Arts and Sciences faculty for his bizarre (in their eyes) campaign to get some work out of the increasingly useless and ossified professoriat. Finally, when Summers told the FAS that its interactions with undergraduates would have to go beyond reciting the same old index cards twice a week in Sanders Theatre, the faculty revolted.

Some military experts point out that Summers was in fact his own worst enemy. They cited his entirely self-inflicted defeat at the notorious Battle of the Fat Tail, during which the now-deposed Prexy opined on the basis of zero evidence that statistical variation in the performance of women in math and science could best be explained by gender inferiority.

Of course, that's not why the Harvard Arts and Sciences Faculty embarked on a scorched-earth campaign to reduce Summers to ashes. The real reason: the spectre of having to sit around seminar tables with babbling 19-year-olds who would expect a tenured Harvard Professor to listen to their ridiculous claptrap and respond, a process known outside of Cambridge as a "college education."

It was the thin end of the wedge: if Summers could force the Arts and Sciences Faculty to teach undergraduates, who knew where it might end? Some FAS members whipped up their troops with atrocity stories such as Summers' alleged plan to place Harvard College on the same schedule as every other college in the United States, thereby cutting short the professors' treasured late summer weeks in Vermont. (We would have said the Vineyard, but a recent census of that resort island reveals that the last Harvard professor sold his summer place to a venture capitalist in October, 2005.)

The post-victory scene at the Faculty Club was reported by some who attended as riotous. Reliable reports reaching the Spy suggested that one faculty member was so intoxicated by his victory celebrations that he tried to buss Weary Professor of German and Comparative Literature Judith Ryan. The unnamed Prof. Ellison remains in intensive care.

The students, who, along with their parents, actually pay the freight for the FAS war efforts, were reported to be less ecstatic. They recall fondly that Summers showed relatively little disdain for the undergraduates and would in fact throw pre-exam parties to relieve the strain on the little darlings. According to a poll purportedly conducted by the Harvard Crimson, 57 per cent of Crimson editors and their roommates wanted Summers to stay, while only 19 per cent approved of the FAS coup.

But with the smoke still curling from the rubble pile that was once Massachusetts Hall, efforts to create a Faculty Provisional Authority are well underway. The Corporation has exhumed former Harvard President Derek Bok, whose disinclination to involve himself in undergraduate education or indeed any aspect of college student life during his first dreary term as President made him the obvious choice to serve as head of the occupation regime.

Shortly the Corporation will be canvassing its contacts in country and faculty clubs to choose a new President of Harvard University, which is reputed to comprise faculties other than arts and sciences. Most schools who attach some importance to their college often include an undergraduate or two on the search committee. If you think that's how the Harvard Corporation intends to choose Summers' successor, then we've got some prime academic real estate next to the Allston freight yards you might be interested in.