Bold Goals, Strife Mark Tenure

Lawrence H. Summers wrote yesterday that in his short tenure as University president he had “played a part in laying some of the foundations” for Harvard’s future.

But much of the work he set out to accomplish remains unfinished—and overshadowed by a series of blistering controversies.

Summers was selected after a nine-month search in March 2001 and tasked to re-energize a complacent University.

From the get-go, however, Harvard’s 27th president drew national headlines, and they were not about his accomplishments.

A PRESIDENT’S BLUES...

In his first year at the helm, the former Treasury secretary clashed with one of the stars of Harvard’s African and African American Studies Department, Fletcher University Professor Cornel R. West ’74.

West said that Summers insulted his scholarship in a private meeting by attacking both his recording of a spoken-word CD and his political activism.

Summers later called the matter a “misunderstanding,” but in April 2002, West left for Princeton.

“He acts like a bull in a china shop; he acts like a bully in a very delicate and dangerous situation,” West said in an interview on National Public Radio. “Harvard deserves so much better, it seems to me, than this quality of leadership.”

Summers ignited further debate later that year at Harvard’s Morning Prayers when he called campaigns for the University to divest from Israel “anti-Semitic in their effect if not in their intent.”

And in September 2004, after he spoke at a Harvard symposium on Native American studies, some attendees said they left the event offended by the president’s remarks, which they asserted downplayed the suffering of Native Americans.

But none of these tiffs matched the reaction to Summers’ infamous January 2005 remarks at a National Bureau of Economic Research conference in Boston.

In his speech at the event, Summers said issues of “intrinsic aptitude” might explain the under-representation of women on the science faculties of top universities.

His comments touched off a media frenzy—and later that month, an apology from Summers.

“I deeply regret the impact of my comments and apologize for not having weighed them more carefully,” he wrote at the time.

But the mea culpa could not quell an uprising from members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), who assailed Summers’ leadership and voted in March 2005 that they lacked confidence in the University’s leader.

Summers pledged to mend ties with the Faculty, and despite calls for his resignation, he said last spring that he had never considered stepping down.

Others, however, did leave their posts in the aftermath of the uproar. Cowles Professor of Anthropology Peter T. Ellison stepped down from his administrative post as dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences last spring, and Harvard Corporation member Conrad K. Harper left the governing board in July 2005, saying he “could no longer support” Summers.

The president’s rocky relationship with the Faculty flared up again this year at a Feb. 7 Faculty meeting, where professors questioned the circumstances behind Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby’s Jan. 27 resignation and blasted Harvard’s handling of a government lawsuit implicating Summers’ close friend, Jones Professor of Economics Andrei Shleifer ’82.

A new no-confidence measure was placed on the docket for next Tuesday’s meeting.

...AND A BLUEPRINT FOR HARVARD

All the while, more quietly, Summers set to work on his ambitious agenda for the University.

He wanted to challenge a culture that he said allowed students to shrug off “the difference between a gene and a chromosome.” Accordingly, he envisioned new science facilities and established cross-University programs such as the Broad Institute and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.

He intensified the University’s plans to establish a second campus across the Charles River in Allston. Just last week, Harvard announced the site and architect of its first science building there.

Aiming to make a Harvard education more affordable, Summers eliminated the required family financial contribution for undergraduates whose families earn less than $40,000.

And he pushed for a more “international” university—one which both recruited more students from abroad and encouraged its own students to study around the globe.

Yet many of Summers’ plans remain incomplete.

From his first days as president, Summers pledged to reform undergraduate education with a review of the College’s curriculum. That reform stalled amid the clamor over his leadership.

And under his watch, the University began sketching the largest fundraising drive in its history. But its launch, too, has been delayed—and Summers’ departure could push back its start even further.

“I would presume it would be [delayed],” said donor Sidney R. Knafel ’52, who is also a Crimson editor, in an interview last night. “I would think that a new president would want to be there.”

But Summers will leave his mark on the University’s administration; he appointed six deans, five current Corporation fellows, and a multitude of other administrators.

Beyond individual appointments, Summers’ grander plan for Harvard was to centralize a sprawling University that had traditionally kept its schools at arm’s length from one another.

“‘Each Tub On Its Own Bottom’ is a vivid, but limiting, metaphor for decision making at Harvard,” he wrote yesterday in his letter. “We will not escape its limits unless our Schools and Faculties increase their willingness to transcend parochial interests in support of broader university goals.”

BIG MAN ON CAMPUS

For students, Summers has been a celebrity of sorts—someone who mingles with them at study breaks, signs dollar bills bearing his signature, and teaches a freshman seminar on globalization.

He joined Bass Professor of Government Michael J. Sandel on stage at Sanders Theatre last spring to teach a popular Social Analysis Core class.

Ultimately, though, Summers’ brusque manner, honed during his years in Washington, ran afoul of faculty members and administrators who found his style too blunt and autocratic.

For Harvard’s next president, the challenge will be to build on the framework Summers has laid—or to start anew.

—Staff writer Nicholas M. Ciarelli can be reached at ciarelli@fas.harvard.edu