Lawrence Summers' lecture draws cheers and jeers

Lawrence Summers’ lecture Monday night, which was closed to the press, drew mixed reviews from the Penn community.

“An audience gathered at Penn Law overwhelmingly enjoyed a thoughtful discussion and dialogue with Professor Lawrence Summers about the causes of — and policy decisions related to — the financial crisis, and the way forward today,” Steve Barnes, the associate dean for communications of Penn’s Law School said in a statement.

A group of students protestors, who interrupted the proceedings to protest Summers and his views, had a decidedly different take on the event and his choice as speaker. They held up signs and asked the audience to join them in laughing at Summers.

“We were shocked that Penn had decided to recognize him through this prestigious event — he is definitely not a role model. We just wanted to make sure people were aware of the type of policies he was involved in, and that people knew that Larry Summers doesn’t represent everyone’s views at Penn,” Law student Jack Regenbogen said.

Regenbogen also called Summers “a poster boy for the proliferation of sweatshops, and that his policies have been directly responsible for oppressive trade agreements.”

Protestors, like College senior Chloe Sigal, also objected to Summers’ statements made while he was president of Harvard University about women’s aptitude in math and science and policies he championed while in the Clinton Administration and as the Chief Economist of the World Bank.

“Summers has also made overtly misogynistic statements claiming that women are underrepresented in math and science because of innate deficiencies, contributed to the failure of the Kyoto protocol and pushed structural adjustment policies as Chief Economist of the World Bank that destabilized countries throughout the Global South,” Sigal said.

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