This is quite funny--read it through to the end. One imagines Larry Summers feels vindicated.
UPDATE: A philosopher in the Boston area writes:
As a generally appreciative reader of your blog, I write to offer clarification that might be helpful. The Summers/West controversy was not mainly about the judgment of West's scholarly work and activities. Rather, it was about the tone of "street" familiarity and subsequent condescension that Summers adopted in his infamous meeting with West.
This was the view of many academics sympathetic to West, particularly those who had nearby experience with Summers or knew others who had. West himself made clear that the issue was mainly about manner of address. Had the issue been mainly about West's scholarly output and its quality, and whether this ever merited appointment as a University Professor at Harvard, I am fairly confident that many of these sympathetic academics, at least those with some knowledge of areas closely related to his work, would not have been nearly as sympathetic. Indeed, some of these academics might question McLemee's highly
favorable judgment of West's earlier work.
In short, if Summers were to now feel vindicated regarding the controversy, this largely suggests that he would feel vindicated about his manner of address to West. I doubt that this is what you meant to suggest.
Indeed, that was not at all what I meant, and I am grateful for the additional context surrounding that dispute, about which I was unaware.
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