The Cheerleader

Lawrence H. Summers’ first year as University president was, to many, a total disaster.

Summers had been brought in to shake up Harvard after a decade of quiet yet uninspiring leadership by Neil L. Rudenstine.

The brash savant Summers was going to force a re-examination of the status quo, rediscover a bully pulpit dusty from disuse and take the risks that would protect the University from complacency at a moment of unparalleled prosperity and success.

All but his most enthusiastic supporters say Summers shook too hard.

What will be remembered of Summers’ first year is his dispute with Fletcher University Professor Cornel R. West ’74 or, more generally, how he managed to cripple a department that had taken a decade to build.

The controversy called into question whether the University wasn’t better off with sleepy old Rudenstine, who had at least parlayed an amiable personality into over $2 billion. No one ever called Rudenstine a “bull in a china shop” or suggested, as West did about Summers, that he was unsuited for the job.

But while the dispute with West dominated the headlines, it didn’t dominate Summers’ year.

On administrative matters, Summers proved an able manager—not surprising given his track record as treasury secretary. This year he managed to put in place a planning process for a campus in Allston, take necessary steps toward cleaning up the University’s relationship with organized labor and bring a more Washington-like structure to Mass. Hall.

But where the verdict on Summers will ultimately be decided is on academics—what he does for the quality of the College and its Faculty.

Like nearly every other president in the past century, Summers came in saying that improving the College would be a top priority. Unlike past presidents, Summers has prominently kept up the rhetoric for a whole year, making concrete as well as symbolic efforts to show that he is for real.

And while many faculty and students still anxiously await sweeping change, on the academic front Summers has been moderately successful in his first year—receiving credit for loosened study abroad regulations and efforts to rein in grade and honor inflation.

Outgoing Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles says that while Summers did not initiate either the study abroad reform or the grading and honors changes, he significantly quickened work on both.

“Certainly, the president’s interest and concern in the quality of undergraduate education has meant an accelerated pace of changes this year,” Knowles says.

Behind the fiery failure of the West debacle, Summers’ successes prove that, under certain circumstances at least, the president who is willing to forcefully state his opinions can get things done.

Summers could goad the Faculty to action—at least where his opinion matched prevailing but unacted upon priorities in the Faculty.

What Summers hasn’t shown is an ability to persuade the Faculty to shift course. Can a course of engagement and loud talk carry persuasive power on issues where the Faculty is of a different mind?

It is these shifts in course for which great Harvard presidents are remembered.

No Puppeteer

In evaluating his first year, Summers says that reforms to undergraduate education top his list of concrete accomplishments.

Summers says there were three things he hoped the Faculty would do this year to improve undergraduate education.

“First was to substantially liberalize the rules regarding foreign study, second was to address the issues around honors and grade inflation and third was to come to a consensus on the importance of an overall review of undergraduate education,” Summers says. “I welcome the fact that on all three of those, things have taken place.”

On the first two counts, progress came as the year drew to a close. Last month, the Faculty unanimously approved legislation on both study abroad and grade and honors inflation.

It is not obvious whether Summers should get credit for either of these accomplishments. As president, Summers has no direct control over the specifics of how Harvard educates its undergraduates.

The independent dean of the Faculty and a dean of undergraduate education under him exist for these purposes. Ultimately, changes must be proposed and approved by the Faculty itself.

Summers’ direct influence on undergraduate education is usually limited to changes on the margin, like his successful push this year to get professional school faculty involved in the Freshman Seminar Program.

Nor can Summers suggest he was responsible for ordering these officials to bring about this year’s changes.

Work was underway on both study abroad and the grading issues before Summers’ arrival.

Dean of Undergraduate Education Susan G. Pedersen ’81-’82 explains that she had already begun collecting data on students’ grades. A Faculty committee was in the process of reviewing study abroad.

Pedersen says Summers neither initiated the changes nor directed her to act.

She says she kept Summers briefed on changes, given his stated interest in undergraduate issues. But while Summers asked questions or shared thoughts, he didn’t have direct input in the issues coming out of her office.

“I did see this as my brief,” Pedersen says. “I pursued a set of issues and there was a fair amount of coincidence of things I wanted to do…and those [Summers] wanted to do.”

Despite what other administrators call a greater engagement in the details of undergraduate affairs than his predecessor, Summers did not interact with Pedersen “drastically” more than did Rudenstine, she says.

Professors involved in molding this year’s Faculty legislation say Summers did not directly intervene to shape their ultimate decisions and actions.

Pedersen was responsible for bringing the issues to the Faculty Council and Summers was never mentioned during the discussion, says council member and Professor of Psychology Marc D. Hauser.

“I was always motivated to put these changes through. My motivation didn’t increase or decrease [with Summers arrival],” says Harvard College Professor Peter K. Bol, a member of the Educational Policy Committee.

And many factors independent of Summers—from Pedersen’s desire to act before the end of her deanship to highly critical media scrutiny—could explain why changes came to fruition in Summers’ first year.

The Cheerleader

Summers makes no claims of being directly responsible for this year’s changes.

“I think ultimately the Faculty made these judgments. I’m not looking for credit,” he says.

But on all three issues—study abroad, grades and honors reform and curricular review—Summers does say he played a role.

“I met with faculty members over the summer and urged that [liberalizing study abroad] be a major priority of this year and suggested that I thought there was no reason why that issue couldn’t be considered within the course of the calendar year,” Summers says.

The issues with grades and honors inflation were “something I had seen as a concern from the beginning,” he says, and again, an issue on which he urged the Faculty to act.

Finally, in conversations with faculty and through the selection of the new dean, Summers says he was able to generate support for the curricular review, which faculty say will be time consuming but worthwhile.

Overall, his role was in offering opinions and encouraging others to act, Summers says.

“I’ve tried to identify and point to some of the issues that I think are most important,” he says.

Professors say Summers was relentless in pursuing these themes in private conservations and public speeches. The issue of grade inflation was even said to have figured prominently in Summers’ fateful meeting with West.

When Summers was not offending professors, but merely stating his opinion that grade and honor inflation or study abroad were important, faculty say his voice was a powerful one.

“On the one hand he advises and counsels. On the other hand he can be a cheerleader and advocate,” Pedersen says. “He’s played that on every major issue I dealt with this year.”

On study abroad Summers was at exactly the right place at the right time, Pedersen says. With the Faculty generally in agreement that some liberalization was in order, Summers was “a great supporter,” she says.

Knowles says Faculty discussion of study abroad changes was moved up by as much as a year due to Summers.

With the issue of grade and honors inflation, Summers’ leadership played a significant supporting role.

When media questioned Harvard’s high number of honors degrees and inflated grades, Summers didn’t seek to downplay the issues, instead admitting Harvard had a problem.

“It did make a difference that President Summers cared about this,” Pedersen says. “That he was willing to say publicly, ‘I think we should do something about this’ helped us move forward and complete the process.”

Professors say it’s impossible to know whether the growing sense that action was needed on study abroad and academic standards would have crystallized without Summers’ public urging.

But many describe his statements as the factor that bumped faculty support over the top, or as Knowles says, accelerated change.

“I think that this had been something that had been growingly seen as important among the Faculty for some years,” Williams Professor of History and Political Science Roderick MacFarquhar says of concern about grades and the number of students receiving honors. “President Summers coming in was an extra boost.”

Harvey C. Mansfield Jr. ’53, Kenan professor of government, says he has no doubt that Summers’ role on the grading issue was “a very important” one. “How could it be a coincidence that we went from a president who doesn’t care about grades to one who did, at the same time as the Faculty chooses to act?” Mansfield says.

The assertive and engaged Summers was able to kick the Faculty into gear.

“He’s pushed along things that were already happening, making them happen a little faster,” says Theda Skocpol, Thomas professor of government and sociology.

An Invisible Hand

Making it easier for an undergraduate to spend junior year at the Sorbonne and harder for them to finish senior year with honors are hardly the types of sweeping changes that those who picked Summers hoped he could bring about.

But Summers’ limited successes this year provide a model he can follow to implement his broader agenda in future years and, more importantly, help him pick and choose his battles.

This year, the president’s increased engagement with the Faculty and with those in charge of undergraduate education paid off.

“[Summers] has challenged all of us, both the deans and the Faculty, to think through existing policies and procedures in areas…and in some cases, either to change things or be clear and sensible about the reasons for not making changes,” says Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68.

Crucially though, with this year’s changes Summers was able to influence outcomes without getting directly involved. There has been no Summers’ Plan for Grade Deflation, and as Pedersen says, Summers left policy-making to her.

On these issues Summers was assertive but dealt with the Faculty with a light enough touch—toeing the line between influencing the Faculty’s agenda and telling them what to do.

Even more important, the changes were allowed to come out from the Faculty, as Summers says they should. Longtime administrators say that initiatives must at least appear to do so if Summers is going to be effective on issues—like undergraduate education—over which he has no direct control.

On academic standards and on study abroad Summers probably had a comparatively easy time. Because Summers’ opinions lined up so well with the underlying Faculty sentiment, all it took was a challenge.

Summers was able to use his bully pulpit to push issues and ideas that were important to him, MacFarquhar says.

“He’s done that well this year, as [his opinions] have coincided with the ideas of the Faculty,” he says. “There will be, at some point in the future, ideas that he has that do not correspond as well. Then the going will be more difficult.”

Rocky Road

The going was more difficult for Summers this year on issues that required significant shifts by the Faculty.

Such was the case when Summers began publicly questioning the University’s long-standing estrangement from the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) (Please see related story, page B-2).

Current Faculty legislation prohibits the University from paying for cadets’ training, which is instead funded by a group of alums.

In the wake of Sept. 11, Summers used his bully pulpit to call for a reconciliation between Harvard liberal elites and the military, and suggested the University should reconsider its policy.

Summers’ initial message was picked up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. And within Harvard, Summers repeated the message before numerous audiences.

But at the end of a year of talk no formal changes have been made to the “uncomfortable” funding arrangement.

This time, Summers spoke out and the Faculty did not snap to.

Senior officials say that facing likely Faculty opposition, Summers was convinced to back off. He has never explicitly asked the Faculty to address the issue.

Some professors—including Mansfield—say they hope Summers is only waiting for Faculty opinion toward ROTC to further improve.

“The atmosphere would have to be prepared first,” Mansfield says, before Summers can really consider a change.

To act now would only give fuller credence to accusations that Summers is a “bull in a china shop.”

If Summers wants to shift the Faculty’s direction, patience and persistence will have to be his largest virtues.

The Path Ahead

A survey of Summers’ agenda for the next several years reveals a mix of issues—some involving a mere acceleration of current developments, others requiring more fundamental change.

Relatively straightforward are issues like graduate student financial aid and improved resources for training public servants.

In his installation speech last fall, Summers called for the University to assure that students at the graduate and professional schools can attend regardless of financial circumstances, as is the case at the College. He also called for greater debt relief to allow graduates to take lower-paying public service jobs.

Progress was made on both fronts this year as the central administration increased its financial support of aid programs at some of the poorer and more service-oriented graduate schools.

And through his leadership on and advocacy of the issue, more substantial and longer-term initiatives are being planned for next year.

Summers was able to work as the catalyst, bringing attention to an issue that had been recognized as important but never before made so central a priority.

Similarly, Summers has said the various parts of the University must collaborate better in the area of the biological sciences.

Increased collaboration between the Medical School, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Harvard’s affiliated hospitals has been a priority for several years, at least in name. Indeed, several projects begun under Rudenstine’s tenure flourished this year.

But Summers has said publicly that he wants the schools to do more.

While Summers concedes that it’s too early to tell whether his message has been fully grasped, there are indications that on this issue as well, prioritization by Summers means a big difference.

Eric P. Buehrens, executive dean for administration at the Medical School, says Summers already has had an impact. He says that prior to this year the move toward collaborative science had meandered along at a “leisurely” pace.

“Summers has made it clear to everybody both in University Hall and here at the Medical School that he really wants these things to happen,” Buehrens says. “In general the pace has definitely quickened.”

But on other issues central to Summers’ agenda, the problem he ran into with ROTC threatens to reemerge, with the Faculty’s own priorities not necessarily in line with Summers’.

Efforts to reform tenure seem to fall in this category.

Appointing a Direction

Summers has said he wants departments to be more aggressive in tenure cases and to take greater risks on professors who are at earlier stages in their career. Harvard should be tenuring professors who will do the bulk of their best work while at Harvard, Summers says.

Despite Summers’ effort to avoid linking this goal with a shift toward tenuring younger academics, leading members of the Faculty understand Summers to mean just this.

“The message we’re getting is that all other factors equal, the president is going to look less favorably on someone who is in their 50s than a scholar who is in their 30s,” says Oliver S. Hart, Furer professor of economics and chair of the economics department.

Summers does hold ultimate power over the appointment process, as he must personally approve all tenure offers at Harvard.

But appointment patterns are largely determined by the Faculty—who decide which tenure cases come across Summers’ desk.

As on undergraduate education, Summers has doggedly promoted his agenda on tenure, making it a part of his standard stump speech.

At the end of a year of talk, Summers says he thinks the message is getting through.

“We’ll see over time but I’ve been gratified by departments’ response to those signals,” Summers says.

Department chairs report that they’ve heard Summers’ message and realize they can get younger candidates approved whom Rudenstine might have seen as too risky.

But that they understand Summers is a bigger risk taker doesn’t mean that the departments themselves will change their behavior.

“There is certainly the impression that [Summers] is willing to allow us to be less conservative they we may have been in the past,” says Gerald Gabrielse, chair of the physics department. “However influential the president is, people are always going to try to make the best appointment they can.”

Department chairs say they haven’t changed their policies and behaviors on tenure in any significant way. Those younger scholars who have been offered tenure this year entered the appointment pipeline prior to Summers’ arrival.

The chairs say departments haven’t yet advanced candidates who they wouldn’t have otherwise—making any claims by Summers of accomplishments on his tenure goals premature.

“In January we put before Summers four senior Americanists, the oldest of whom was 40,” MacFarquhar says of the government department. “This is something that started with us far before we heard from him.”

And at least in some departments, it isn’t clear that a change is in the future.

Professors in the humanities say they have no plans to start tenuring legions of 30-somethings, defending their tendency to tenure older scholar by noting it takes longer for scholars in their fields to establish themselves. Any changes they do plan on making are on the margin.

“One doesn’t want to be tenuring people in their 60s, but certainly people in their 50s [can be candidates],” says Richard F. Thomas, chair of the classics department.

Opposition may prove too much for even the most aggressive proponent of the bully pulpit.

Summers does have the option of going beyond talk, on this and issues like it. If Summers turned down every tenure candidate over 45 he’d surely have an effect on demographics.

But then he’d have a faculty revolt on his hands and more years like this one—with concrete progress overshadowed by shocking failure.

—Staff writer David H. Gellis can be reached at gellis@fas.harvard.edu.