Normally I'm opposed to the introduction of sharia law. However, I'll make an exception for Harvard. No doubt the city of Cambridge would find it comforting to hear the sound of the adhan, which calls Muslims to prayer five times a day. Soon the calming, rhythmic routines of the seventh century would spread outward, like ripples in a pond, soothing the surrounding communities.
Lawrence Summers will be gone, of course, whether sharia law is adopted at Harvard or not. As an academic infidel, he leaves Harvard in either case lacking a crucial part of his anatomy. Perhaps they've nailed his up on the wall in the Lawrence Summers School of Feminist Scientific Doctrine – alongside a photocopy of the $500 million check Harvard cut as penance for blaspheming the sacred doctrine of political correctness?
Statistics may be of some value here. Despite the fact that only 19 percent of Harvard's undergraduate students thought Summers should go ("Students Say Summers Should Stay," Harvard Crimson, Feb. 20 , 2006) news of his departure was greeted by the professorial class with wild, uninhibited cheering, gunfire (for the most part) directed upward, and chants of "Death to the Infidels, Death to America, Death to Israel!" Ah, the civilizing effects of an elite, liberal arts education.
On the other hand, does Larry Summers not bear at least some of the responsibility for his own demise? He did, after all, receive his own education in the Clinton administration. As such, he would have known that Harvard's stripped down motto – Veritas, which originally included the words "Christo et Ecclesiae" – now simply referred to higher education's politically correct truth, not higher truth.
Mr. Summers should have known that the only unpardonable sin in academia today is to advance a theory that has not been sprinkled with the holy urine of the politically correct establishment. The PC holy grail holds that only certain, carefully vetted theories can be advanced to explain the facts around us. In the event those theories don't offer sufficient explanation, the facts must be ignored, twisted ... or beheaded.
Which brings us back to sharia law. There's very little difference between the way that the Islamofacists deal with dissent and the way the PC left in America deals with dissent. Appeasement and placation will cost you a piece of your anatomy, in either event.