Summers was hugely successful at the academic game–he got tenure at Harvard at age 28 or something, which is practically unheard of. His work was always policy-relevant, but more than anything he respects intellectual firepower, the ability to cut through what everyone’s been maundering about with an original, hard-to-refute argument.

It’s not that he wants the experts on Assyrian pottery or Edgar Allan Poe to be movers and shakers, but he wants them to kick ass the way he did. He wants them to tenure younger folks who are hotshots, meaning junior faculty who are going to make lasting, high-impact scholarly contributions that shake things up. He wants them to dominate their fields intellectually. (Notice that his critique of Cornel West, in effect, was that West was too much involved with the world and not enough in scholarly endeavor.)

The problem is that economics may be a field where this kind of acheivement is more sought-after, culturally normative, and intellectually possible than other disciplines. So he’s stepping on plenty of toes and intimidating people by implying that they ought to model their careers and behavior on people like him. Summers is the kind of guy who will ask tough questions about somebody’s research and expect them to stand up for themselves. He’s challenging them on their own turf, while at the same time his wordliness makes them uncomfortable, as you so beautifully describe.They don’t like it.

I don’t really have anything of substance to offer in response. But that’s some fine writin’.

Greetings from the outer outer rings,
Brian