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Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Kafkaesque

From the blog Oh Harvard...:

Ruth Wisse, Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature, was always a vocal Summers supporter, and she couldn't but allude to her dissatisfaction with current state of Harvard politics. In a lecture on Franz Kafka's The Trial, she remarked (rough quotation):

"Perhaps the most disturbing thing about The Trial is [Joseph] K.'s resignation to his fate. What happened to man who was so fiery at the onset of the story? At the end, like our former president, he gives up without a fight."


She got a few laughs, but mostly an awkward silence fell on the room. She apologized, visibly upset, and tried to articulate perhaps her feelings on the matter or why she had referenced Summers. It was actually sad to see her, clearly full of emotions about a battle that was over before it had begun. She, like many of the undergraduate body, at least wanted Summers to fight back, to stand up for his actions. Like K., he goes quietly to the slaughter that he once seemed so determined to fight.




Assuming this anecdote is accurate, UD has a few comments.

(1.) Wisse has demonstrated here the disturbing tendency of some professors to inject political content into their lectures. She knows that Summers’ strongest support comes from Harvard students, and she is lobbying those students. If it’s wrong for Ward Churchill, it’s wrong for Professor Wisse.

(2.) Mr. Summers will leave his post at Harvard and -- after a year off at full salary -- return to a lucrative, powerful, and prestigious position in Harvard’s economics department. Professor Wisse discerns a parallel between this fate and that of Joseph K., degraded, tortured, and slaughtered like an animal.

(3.) A more appropriate parallel between The Trial and the fate of President Summers would stress his involvement in an actual trial -- that of Andrei Shleifer -- and the way in which, like all the well-connected functionaries in Kafka’s work, Shleifer, though found guilty, was returned to the Harvard castle and given no punishment.
Posted at: 3/01/2006 12:37:00 PM