Sniping at Summers

Despite the vociferous debate about Harvard president Larry Summers this year, few prominent alumni have been willing to comment publicly on the president's trials and tribulations -- especially if they are inclined to be at all critical of him. So it was interesting to get a peek into the private opinion of a well-known alumnus in the form of a letter that came our way, dated Nov. 8. The letter was from Tim Wirth, former US senator and representative from Colorado and currently president of the United Nations Foundation. It was addressed to Jamie Houghton, the senior fellow on Harvard's governing corporation, who also chairs Corning Inc. and sits on other major boards. ''With all your responsibilities -- Corning, Exxon-Mobil, The Metropolitan Museum and Harvard -- I can't imagine that you have time for anything else," Wirth began, ''but I wanted to bring to your attention the enclosed speech by Hunter Rawlings, the president of Cornell." In his speech last month, Rawlings criticized intelligent design and ''the political movement seeking to inject religion into state policy and our schools." Wirth, a former member of the Harvard board of overseers, went on to say that ''the times demand this sort of leadership and institutional commitment," and added that Princeton president Shirley Tilghman had also spoken out on the topic. ''Unhappily, I fear that President Summers is so damaged that a Harvard statement and position might be lost, or might be reported only along with a further recitation of his woes." Then Wirth cited an open letter to the committee searching for a new corporation member, from 22 current and former department chairs, which called for greater transparency in the running of the university ''to repair the damaged fabric of trust." Wirth continued: ''Harvard is important to this debate -- and so many others -- and it is painful to see the university and its potential so weighted down. As you know so well, the world depends on Harvard's leadership, and has come to expect it." Wirth did not return a call and Houghton could not be located over the holiday weekend. But John Longbrake, Summers's spokesman, said the president ''has been speaking to alumni groups about intelligent design, as recently as November 12 at a large gathering in New York City, when he made the same point as Hunter Rawlings did in his fine speech."

FREE SPEECH PENALTY? -- A Turkish publisher may be sentenced to a jail term this week for printing a translation of a book by a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In his 1997 book, ''Spoils of War: The Human Cost of America's Arms Trade, John Tirman, executive director of MIT's Center for International Studies, was ''critical of Turkey's sustained repression of Kurds and of the US role in aiding and abetting that repression," as Tirman wrote last week in an op-ed piece in the International Herald Tribune. The Turkish publisher, Fatih Tas, has a history of pushing against free speech restrictions in the country. In fact, Tas was tried and acquitted in 2002 for publishing a book by MIT's Noam Chomsky. Tas, who is now accused of humiliating the Turkish state, is being prosecuted under a new law that was supposed to help Turkey establish human rights standards in line with the European Union. But based on his conversations with Turkish intellectuals, Tirman said he think Tas and about 50 others facing similar charges, including acclaimed novelist Orhan Pamuk, are pawns in an internal power struggle over Turkey's bid to join the EU. ''I think it's a strategy of the Turkish military in particular to keep Turkey out of the EU," Tirman told us.

LET'S TRY THIS AGAIN -- Carefully and delicately, the University of Massachusetts at Boston has begun its search for its next vice chancellor for student affairs. The decision is a touchy matter: The last person to hold the job was the well-liked Keith Motley, whose passing over for the chancellorship last year sparked major protest on campus, as some accused the administration of rejecting a qualified person of color for a white man from outside the system. Administrators say they are taking pains to conduct an exhaustive search for the new head of student affairs: They have hired a search firm, plan to bring six candidates (two of whom are people of color) to campus, and winnow that bunch down to three for return interviews. A decision could be made as early as the start of the new year. The winner of the job will have the pivotal task of seeking to make the commuter campus feel more cohesive, a goal of the new chancellor, Michael Collins. The hiring is also sensitive because it comes shortly after the flubbed hiring of the campus assistant vice chancellor for administration and finance, who was fired after the school learned that he had been fired from his job at the state treasurer's office after pornography was found on his computer.