The standing committee on Social Studies has still to make a decision on whether to have Martin Peretz speak and whether to accept $500,000 for a scholarship. A meeting on Friday was inconclusive, and yesterday’s meeting also ended without a decision. Apparently, some members of the committee still see an up-side to formally honoring the man who – the Boston Globe excepted – most people seem to agree is a clear-cut bigot (see a great post by Ta-Nehisi Coates in the Atlantic yesterday).
Without even a hint of irony, Harvard as an institution claimed that not accepting the funds would be a violation of academic freedom (who was it who said Muslims didn’t deserve first amendment protections?) and quaintly described his views as merely “distressing.” Fortunately, Social Studies and Harvard alumni and students know the difference between blacklisting someone and deciding to honor him with a named scholarship. Over 450 have signed an open letter (which includes a choice selection of Peretz’s quotes on not only Arabs and Muslims but also African Americans and Latinos) calling on the university to reconsider, including:
- Over 65 social studies alums, 15 social studies staff and faculty, and more than 65 other Harvard alumni and 75 current Harvard students.
- Signers from Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (under which Social Studies falls) as well as the Kennedy School of Government, the Law school, the Business school, the Medical school, the school of Public Health, and the Education school.
- The oldest alumni signature is from the class of 1963, and the youngest is from 2010; there is even a parent of a current student who signed on!
- Robert Paul Wolff, the first head tutor of Social Studies from 1960-1961 has signed on along with at least 3 other faculty who taught with the program when Peretz was associated with the program.
This letter has been shared with the Social Studies committee and the President of Harvard, with no reply thus far. We hope they will publicly explain whatever decision they come to, unlike Peretz who thinks that because people are giving money to Harvard he has nothing to answer for.
As for the wealthy and influential alumni and friends of Peretz who are behind the effort to honor him, they’ve been conspicuously silent in past weeks. Who knew that Al Gorethinks people like Peretz deserve to be honored? Maybe Jamie Gorelick (9-11 commission) or Juan Carlos Zarate (senior adviser to CSIS and former deputy national security advisor) might be uncomfortable being associated with Marty’s views on Arabs and Muslims. Marc Grantz’s wealthy Middle Eastern corporate clients at Credit Suisse may not be thrilled by his backing the scholarship, if David Ignatius thinks Marty’s such a great guy he clearly doesn’t even begin to understand what it would take to be a neutral mediator on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Amy Gutmann is not only the president of UPenn who writes about the social responsibility of universities, but is also on the board of the National Constitution Center (no comment on Peretz’s 1st amendment slip-up, but maybe it’s ok since he apologized). And since Peretz has not limited his bigotry to Arabs and Muslims, maybe Abigail Thernstrom (vice-chair, US Commission on Civil Rights and noted sholar and commentator on issues of race in the US) would disagree with Peretz’s assertions that Latin societies suffer from ‘congential corruption’ and ‘near tropical work habits’; perhaps Thomas Williamson (chair of the ChevronTexaco Task Force on Equality of Fairness, Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs) would find promoting Marty’s views on African Americans to be a bit tricky to reconcile with his own work. The only person we can be sure will come out guns blazing to support Peretz would be Alan Dershowitz, but he’s already so discredited that no-one is likely to mind much.
Sam Sternin grew up in south and southeast Asia, graduated from Harvard with a degree in Social Studies in 2001, and has an MPA from the Woodrow Wilson School. In college, he was active in almost every ethno-religious group that would have him, ranging from the Harvard Vietnamese Association and the Harvard African Students Association to the Society of Arab Students and the Harvard Islamic Society. These views are solely his own, though others are welcome to share them.
