By now the story is known: a brilliant Harvard president forced out early in his term by repeated faculty votes of no confidence. They couldn't find a way to work with him. Reportedly his “arrogant and imperious” style was the core of the problem, and he refused to change his style even after promising to do so. He accomplished numerous good things for Harvard, but in the end these didn't matter. His comments last year about women possibly being less fit for careers in science simply acted as a flash point for the faculty's anger over his behavior. As is usual with issues of personality, it wasn't the "what" of what he did. It was the "how."

I'm sure it wasn't all Summers' fault. I know very well how difficult and politically correct members of the Harvard community can be. I'll never forget giving a talk at the Radcliffe Institute many years ago, only to have an audience member suddenly erupt into a bizarre, enraged monologue to the effect that I had no right to my opinions, and indeed no right to be there at all.

Nevertheless, the main problem lies with Summers. What goes on with people like this, who turn gold into rocks, and doom themselves to failure as leaders despite their enormous gifts?

One of Summers' old friends said yesterday that he "always had to be the smartest kid in the room." That rang a bell: when you were in school, how well did you like that kid?

Very bright people are sometimes either socially inept, insecure, or feel disempowered around others. Despite their huge intellects, they feel like stupid outsiders. So they may use their intelligence as a club to force others to their will. They often have no understanding that other people need to be respected; at some fairly deep level these other people don't really exist for them. Sometimes, as with several true geniuses I've worked with over the years, the lack of social/political sense was bred into them, in a home rife with paranoia, that gave the basic message that other people had to be finessed or vanquished with a combination of intellect and conviction.

Of course it doesn't work that way. People feel unimportant, bullied, and condescended to. Rage builds, and it's only a matter of time before the genius/leader is either marginalized or, like Summers, chewed up and spit out.

Perhaps it's no accident that Summers' biggest backers in the Harvard community have been the undergraduates, for whom all such issues of power and control are largely non-existent.

The saddest thing is that these people usually have absolutely no awareness that any such problem exists. They are thick as mud in this area, despite their computer brains. If they get so much as a clue, they quickly retroflex into denial: it's simply too emotionally dangerous.

"A strong leader is not just someone who can name a goal or force a change," Mary C. Waters, a Harvard sociology professor, said yesterday, "but someone who can bring out the best in people and find ways to encourage teamwork."

That sounds like a plain vanilla, garden-variety comment, but given Mr. Summers' personality, it's an understatement, and a profound one at that.

Posted by Richard Pomerance at 06:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On February 16, The New York Times ran a piece titled "(Name Here) Is a Liar and a Cheat" about such sites as dontdatehimgirl.com, manhaters.com, womansavers.com, truedater.com, and dontdateherman.com, recently popular in the dating world. These sites allow men and women to tell others about someone they have dated, to alert them to the date’s inadequacy or lack of straightforwardness (or occasionally that the person is actually as advertised). Frequently the person is found to have been grossly misrepresenting themselves; for example, a man is married when they've said they're single; nothing like his pictures on the dating sites (weight, age appearance, stature, etc.); well employed when he's living in his parents basement, and so forth. The complaint about the women is most frequently that they either have bizarre personalities or are simply unattractive physically.

Clearly, this is an idea whose time has come, for this group no less than every other category of transaction. In this era it's entirely proper for patients to rate their doctors, purchasers their vendors, students their professors, and on across the board. Feedback is a great leveler of the playing field; it insures that people can't hide out and cheat their customers; it weeds out providers who aren't giving real value.

So let's get rid of the cheats as quickly as possible. But beyond the obvious misrepresentations, it's interesting how far most of these people who've been hurt go into the relationship before they wake up to the fact that they're being conned. Take the commonest case, in which the man turns out to be a sleaze-ball serial dater just out to score, maybe already married, possibly an alcoholic or marginal drug addict, or possessed of a violent streak. Why don't people wake up earlier to the fact that the person they've been dating is a scumball, manipulator, or garden variety personality disorder?

Some of this problem comes with the territory: it takes several months of dating before the sexual chemicals diminish to the point that people can begin to see things straight. They also fail to ask whether the person they're dating might not be sneaking into their lives by virtue of a personal blind spot. Is there something that allows the person to appear attractive to them when the actual case is that they're simply familiar, and negatively familiar, at that? If people turn off their radar, no wonder they get missiles dropped on them!

But the most common mistake, and the one easiest to fix, is that people get so caught up in their wishes for a wonderful new relationship that they fail to look for and take in new data about the person, and instead simply accept what they're being spoon fed. No wonder that they see nothing - until they've been trapped, chewed up, and are ready to be spit out.

Here some simple dating rules that can help you stay safe:

1. Fall in love (or in sex) only up to a point ; reserve a part of yourself to uncertainty. It's just fine not to know how far you can go with this person; you just met!

2. Ask yourself why the other person is so particularly appealing. When you get an answer, muse on how that leaves you vulnerable, and whether you've ever encountered the same situation in the past; if so, how did you get hurt? This will give you a clue as to your possible blind spot - and a remedy in either your heart or your action.

3. Ask yourself, over the first several months of your relationship, what you really know about the person; not what he or she tells you, but what you've validated via other, multiple, reliable sources. If you haven't validated it, the data is worthless.

4. Don't be afraid to go get that data. In the new century it's our responsibility to get the information we need. If someone we're contemplating an involvement with has a problem with our learning about them, look out! Either they've been in a cave for the last decade, or they've got something to hide. Good people should have no reason to keep you from talking to friends, co-workers, ex wives and significant others, etc.

Involve yourself keeping these ideas firmly in mind, and it will be far less likely that you'll ever need to be posting on one of these sites for the dating-exploited.

Posted by Richard Pomerance at 06:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)