Rifts Between Harvard President and Faculty Lead to Summers’ Resignation
By David Pluviose
Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers’ often-stormy five-year presidency, marred by numerous faculty conflicts and resignations in protest over his abrasive leadership style, is the shortest since Dr. Cornelius C. Felton died in office in 1862 after two years at the helm. Summers will officially step down June 30, and former Harvard President Dr. Derek Bok will take the reins on an interim basis until a permanent successor is named.
“I have reluctantly concluded that the rifts between me and segments of the Arts and Sciences faculty make it infeasible for me to advance the agenda of renewal that I see as crucial to Harvard’s future. I believe, therefore, that it is best for the university to have new leadership,” Summers said in a Feb. 21 letter to the Harvard community. Summers’ spokesman, John Longbrake, did not respond to a request for further comment as of press time.
The first official faculty rebuke of Summers’ leadership came in the form of a 218-185 Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) no-confidence vote in March 2005. The vote was a sharp public rebuke of Summers’ managerial style and comments he made suggesting that “intrinsic aptitude” is to blame for the lack of female representation in science and engineering disciplines.
Fellows of Harvard’s governing body, The Harvard Corporation, backed Summers after that no-confidence vote, and tensions between Summers and the FAS thawed. However, the latest faculty uproar concerned the January resignation of Dr. William C. Kirby, who had served just four years as dean of the college. Also, Dr. Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, Harvard’s former dean of the Graduate School of Education, resigned in 2005 after a three-year stint. Both were appointed by Summers and both said they looked forward to a return to teaching, but many on the Faculty Council say Kirby and Lagemann were just the latest in a series of administrators pushed out by Summers.
“Summers was someone who, when he made a bad decision, he didn’t back down. … His inclination was to scream and yell at the person who told him that he didn’t know everything about the issue. His style was to try and scapegoat one of his deans for having made the decision instead of him — that’s was one of the reasons why his deans, I think, were always stepping down,” says a senior professor in Harvard’s Department of Economics, who spoke to Diverse on the condition of anonymity.
