In January, Summers suggested that one reason women are found less often working in certain scientific and technical fields (especially engineering) might — just might — be that men and women are (brace yourself for a shock) innately different. Yes, he said, that’s not the only reason: They’re raised differently, and society has different expectations of them, and employers need to offer more childcare and flex time, and all that. Even so, there’s also “reasonably strong evidence of taste differences between little girls and little boys that are not easy to attribute to socialization.” In other words, it’s not just the fault (if “fault” is the word) of society or sexism; it’s how males and females are made.

When civilized people let bullies push them around — when they let bullies get away with acting like they hold the moral high ground — then they effectively surrender control of the campus to the bullies.

Summers made these remarks in the course of a lengthy address (transcript here) marked by thoughtful analysis, not chauvinistic bombast. Indeed, he closed by saying “I’ve given you my best guesses after a fair amount of reading the literature and a lot of talking to people. They may be all wrong. I will have served my purpose if I have provoked thought on this question and provoked the marshalling of evidence to contradict what I have said.”

Sounds like an invitation to a nice, civil scholarly exchange, doesn’t it? Ah, but by now you know better than to expect that’s what followed.

Ever since he made his remarks, Summers has been under fire at Harvard and elsewhere; he’s spent months apologizing and clarifying and explaining. But to no avail. In March he was hit with a “no confidence” vote from the faculty (by a 218-185 margin), fueling calls for him to resign or be fired. His specific comments about women were denounced by an even wider margin (253-137). At this point, it’s anyone’s guess whether he’ll keep his job.

Feel sorry for him yet? If not, stick around.

Now that there’s blood in the water, another controversy is surfacing over comments Summers made several months earlier, this time involving American Indians. His crime: Declining to charge the Europeans who settled America with full-fledged, intentional genocide.

This controversy goes back to September, at a Harvard conference on Native American issues. In the course of welcoming the participants, (transcript here), Summers stated that government funds might be harming tribes by fostering “a sense of dependency on the larger society,” and recommended giving some thought to the unintended consequences of government policies. In that context, he noted a tragic aspect of American history.

What actually comes out if you study it — and I think this is relatively established fact — is that for everyone who was killed or maimed in some attack by European-descended Americans on the Native American population, for every conscious death that came in war, 10 were a consequence of the diseases that came to North America with the European immigrants. There are fragmentary accounts of a kind of early biological warfare. You know, let's wrap a blanket around somebody who has smallpox and then encourage some other people to use that blanket. But the vast majority of the suffering that was visited on the Native American population as the Europeans came was not a plan or an attack; it was in many ways a coincidence that was a consequence of that assimilation. Nobody’s plan. But that coincidence caused an enormous amount of suffering.

This, as it turned out, was enough to outrage many of those who assembled for the conference. They vented their feelings, naturally, to the media, accusing Summers of taking an “apologist stance for colonialism,” and of advancing “a myth of American innocence.” There was no foundation to these charges; nevertheless, the Harvard president again bent over backward to explain himself. (“I did not for a moment mean to diminish the severity or ferocity of the widespread violence that claimed very many lives.”) And again, his detractors simply repeated and amplified their charges to the press.

Like I said, the poor guy just can’t catch a break. And it’s not because he doesn’t have his facts straight, or didn’t speak clearly enough. He’s just up against people driven by anger. Moreover, it’s not so much that he made them angry as that they were already angry — and just waiting for an excuse to take offense.

We all know people who are forever flying off the handle, and usually they’d have you believe it’s because of some injustice they’ve suffered. But in some places — especially universities — people are urged to indignation on behalf not of themselves, but of various oppressed groups. And some don’t need much encouraging. They’re forever discovering racism, sexism, homophobia, et al in the most innocent places, and are quick to level public accusations. They really don’t want a civil, scholarly exchange; they want to bully others and feel righteous about it at the same time. (As Homer Simpson said when he started a security agency: “Finally, something that combines my love of helping people with my love of hurting people!”)

What do you do when you run into this sort of attitude? The short answer, I think, is simply to call it what it is: Thuggery.

I can see the possible reasons Summers is trying to mollify the mob that wants his head. It may be a matter of university politics, or it may be that he’s a civilized man who doesn’t want to give needless offense. The former motive is understandable; the latter, commendable. But in the big picture, the gentle approach may be doing a disservice to the cause of civility on campus.

When civilized people let bullies push them around — when they let bullies get away with acting like they hold the moral high ground — then they effectively surrender control of the campus to the bullies. The message they want to send students and faculty is: So long as you conduct yourselves with basic civility, you’re free to argue for or against a wide range of ideas, in the best spirit of academia. But the message they end up sending is: So long as you conduct yourselves with basic civility, you can expect to get run over by anyone who doesn’t bother with the same standard; if we in the leadership kowtow to them, so must you. So you’d better confine yourself to expressing only the safest opinions, if you know what’s good for you. That, or start bullying other people yourself — if you can get away with it.

And that, most of us can agree, would be a really terrible message.

So while I don’t know whether Lawrence Summers will survive at Harvard or not, I’d love to see him come out and start delivering some strong speeches against the tyranny of (forgive the cliché) political correctness. True, if he does that, it might well shorten his term drastically. But he’d leave Harvard, and academia as a whole, a better place for having passed through.