Brendan Conways review of a bad book on Lawrence Summers raises some interesting questions. Here are the concluding paragraphs:
Should he continue on his current path, Mr. Summers will continue to steamroll calcified Harvard lefties and give conservatives reason for glee. But hell also continue to change the university rapidly, and he wont solve longstanding problems like declining standards in undergraduate education.
And that, in the end, is a mixed bag. It means more wealth, more technological advances and presumably more resources for everyone. But it could also mean stripping intellectual pursuits of their primacy of place.
Summers deserves some credit for actually having a mind that is not completely overrun with liberal cliches. He has occasionally showed some common sense and open-mindedness. However, that is not the same as having a true understanding of a universitys civilizational mission.