The College Fix

Those who saw 2010’s The Social Network will recall a memorable scene where Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss meet with Larry Summers, the president of Harvard at that time. The twins alleged that Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea for a website and asked Summers to intervene. Instead, he berated them.

While it’s unclear whether the film is entirely truthful in its portrayal of Facebook’s rise to fame, the Summers scene was apparently accurate. In a recent interview, Summers boasted of his conduct during his meeting with the Winklevoss brothers, even insulting them. According to The Harvard Crimson:

The portrayed twins came off as jerks, but at a conference yesterday, the real Summers pushed the envelope one step further, suggesting that they were “an asshole.”

“Rarely have I encountered such swagger, and I tried to respond in kind,” he said, justifying his response to the twins. …

“One of the things you learn as a college president is that if an undergraduate is wearing a tie and jacket on Thursday afternoon at 3:00, there are two possibilities,” Summers said. “One is that they’re looking for a job and have an interview. The other is that they are an asshole.”

“This was the latter case,” he said.

Understandably, these comments have offender the Winklevoss brothers. In a letter to current Harvard President Drew Faust, they make a strong case that the asshole is in fact Summers. For one thing, they attended once-a-month office hours in order to meet the president–a detail the film omits. And when Summers was unable to see them at this time, they came back the following month instead:

Simply put, we went to his office seeking advice and mentorship, not further conflict. …

His manner was not inconsistent with his reputation and present day admissions of being tactfully challenged. It was not his failure to shake hands with the three of us upon entering his office (doing so would have required him to take his feet off his desk and stand up from his chair), nor his tenor that was most alarming, but rather his scorn for a genuine discourse on deeper ethical questions, Harvard’s Honor Code, and its applicability or lack thereof.

We now further understand why our meeting was less than productive; someone who does not value ethics with respect to his own conduct, would likely have little interest in this subject as it related to the conduct of others. Perhaps there is a “variability of aptitude” for decency and professionalism among university faculty.

I’m no supporter of privileged Harvard grads using lawsuits to make money off the successes of others–a criticism Nathan Harden makes in this post for National Review‘s The Corner–but it strikes me as legitimate for the Winklevi to be upset about this. In his role as an administrator dealing with students, Summers was overly condescending during the meeting. His recent spat of name-calling is even uglier.

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