Summers resigns from Harvard

[newmassdad]

<p>Official. On the Harvard Web site:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.harvard.edu/[/url]”>http://www.harvard.edu/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>The back story here is no surprise. Fundraising was becoming more difficult.</p>

[baseballmom]

<p>newmassdad-
I agree not much of a surprise, although disappointing. Maybe they’ll choose a president who is better at regurgitating the status quo and maintaining the expected nauseatingly high pc level.</p>

[interesteddad]

<p>There was a second vote of no-confidence from the Faculty coming at a scheduled meeting next week – this one over the perception that Summers drove the Dean of Faculty to resign. He just kept making too many enemies to survive.</p>

<p>Smart guy, good ideas, but the people skills and political sensitivity of a porcupine.</p>

[newmassdad]

<p>Yes, the issue with Summers was not change. It was ignoring anyone who disagreed. It was bullying to get one’s way. It was not understanding that leadership is not the same as management or authority.</p>

[afan]

<p>Harvard and Summers will both land on their feet. Being a university president is a tough job, highly political- more like being a small town mayor than a cabinet secretary. One can have a lot of political skill without being up to that level.</p>

[ADad]

<p>Summers is taking a year sabbatical and then becoming a University Professor at Harvard (where he already has tenure).</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.harvard.edu%5B/url%5D”>www.harvard.edu</a></p>

[idad]

<p>Some background from the NY Times: <a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/22/education/22harvard.html?_r=1&oref=slogin[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/22/education/22harvard.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[driver]

<p>And some background from Harvard, via Alan Dershowitz.

A PLURALITY of one faculty has brought about an academic coup d’etat against not only Harvard University president Lawrence Summers but also against the majority of students, faculty, and alumni. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which forced Summers’s resignation by voting a lack of confidence in him last March and threatening to do so again on Feb. 28, is only one component of Harvard University and is hardly representative of widespread attitudes on the campus toward Summers. The graduate faculties, the students, and the alumni generally supported Summers for his many accomplishments. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences includes, in general, some of the most radical, hard-left elements within Harvard’s diverse constituencies. And let there be no mistake about the origin of Summers’s problem with that particular faculty: It started as a hard left-center conflict. Summers committed the cardinal sin against the academic hard left: He expressed politically incorrect views regarding gender, race, religion, sexual preference, and the military.

</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/02/22/coup_against_summers_a_dubious_victory_for_the_politically_correct/[/url]”>http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/02/22/coup_against_summers_a_dubious_victory_for_the_politically_correct/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[Zuma]

<p>Bombardieri can now take a well-deserved sabbatical.</p>

[driver]

<p>He certainly does deserve a sabbatical.
More from Dershowitz here from a 2/17 Globe article (interesting how little of this kind of dissent makes it outside of Rt. 128):

As critics of Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers step up pressure for him to resign or radically alter the way he leads the university, a few professors have begun rallying to his defense.</p>

<pre><code>Late yesterday, one of Harvard’s most famous faculty members, law professor Alan Dershowitz, issued a statement backing Summers’s presidency, in which he said the storm of opposition “sounds like the trial of Galileo.”
</code></pre>

<p>“In my 41 years at Harvard, I have never experienced a president more open to debate, disagreement, and dialogue than Larry Summers,” wrote Dershowitz, adding that “professors who are afraid to challenge him are guilty of cowardice.”</p>

<p>Dershowitz noted that he disagreed with Summers’s comments last month that innate differences might help explain why more men than women are top achievers in science and math, but he defended the university president’s right to raise the proposition.</p>

<p>“This is truly a time of crisis for Harvard,” he wrote. “The crisis is over whether a politically correct straightjacket will be placed over the thinking of everybody in this institution by one segment of the faculty.”

<a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/02/17/some_professors_back_harvards_summers/[/url]”>http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/02/17/some_professors_back_harvards_summers/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[tsdad]

<p>From today’s Chronicle of Higher Education, <a href=“http://chronicle.com/free/2006/02/2006022106n.htm[/url]”>http://chronicle.com/free/2006/02/2006022106n.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>

The key fact pushing the pace of events this week, according to the senior professor, is that today is the last day the agenda can be changed for next Tuesday’s meeting of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. At that meeting, faculty members had planned to vote on a motion of no confidence in Mr. Summers’s leadership. The faculty, which includes Harvard’s undergraduate and graduate divisions and is the largest academic unit on the campus, passed a similar no-confidence measure last March.</p>

<p>Next Tuesday’s meeting could have proved exceptionally embarrassing to Harvard and to the Harvard Corporation, its seven-member governing board, the professor said, because of other items on the agenda.</p>

<p>Chief among them was to be a motion to censure Mr. Summers for his role in what has become known as the “Shleifer affair,” the professor said. Andrei Shleifer, a prominent Harvard economist and personal friend of Mr. Summers, was a defendant in a lawsuit alleging that he and a former staff member had defrauded the U.S. government through a program intended to help Russia make the transition to a market economy.</p>

<p>Harvard defended Mr. Shleifer throughout the litigation and last August agreed to settle the case by paying a $26.5-million penalty. Mr. Shleifer has never been disciplined by Harvard, and in fact was awarded a new chair during the litigation, said the professor who spoke to The Chronicle. As a result, Mr. Shleifer’s relationship with Mr. Summers has drawn increasing criticism. The professor said the combination of the penalty and legal fees had cost Harvard $44-million.

</p>

[driver]

<p>Pocket change for Harvard. He’d already pledged $50M for “The Task Forces on Women Faculty and Women in Science and Engineering” as part of his surrender/apologia–his second mistake.</p>

<p><a href=“http://feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswirestory.asp?id=9045[/url]”>http://feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswirestory.asp?id=9045&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[tsdad]

<p><a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=511201[/url]”>http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=511201&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>

I’ve been a member of this Faculty for over 45 years, and I am no longer easily shocked,” is how Frederick H. Abernathy, the McKay professor of mechanical engineering, began his biting comments about the Shleifer case at Tuesday’s fiery Faculty meeting… “I was deeply shocked and disappointed by the actions of this University” in the Shleifer affair, which was detailed in a lengthy magazine article that jolted many professors out of their reading period slumber last month.

</p>

<p>

The outcome of the tawdry Shleifer affair…would have been unthinkable—unthinkable—during the last two presidencies, but is all too characteristic of the present malaise,” Agassiz Professor of Zoology Farish A. Jenkins Jr. told Summers at the meeting.

</p>

<p>Harry R. Lewis ’68, the McKay professor of computer science is writing a book, according to the Crimson article, which claims the

relativism with which Harvard has dealt with the Shleifer case undermines Harvard’s moral authority over its students.

</p>

<p>And finally:

Lorand Matory ’82, professor of anthropology and of African and African American studies, called Summers’ responses at the Faculty meeting to queries about the Shleifer matter “nothing short of disgusting.”</p>

<p>He cares so little for Harvard’s name and Harvard’s mission to do good in the world,” Matory said of Summers.

</p>

[baseballmom]

<p>From this morning’s Boston Globe:</p>

<p>Coup against Summers a dubious victory for the politically correct
By Alan M. Dershowitz | February 22, 2006</p>

<p>POST EDITED
Please do not post copyrighted materials in their entirety. It is against the CC terms of service and doesn’t make publishers happy either. A few quotes and a link is fine, just not the entire article. Thank you.
Moderator Skyhawk</p>

[baseballmom]

<p>Oops, Driver, I posted before noticing your posts.</p>

[tsdad]

<p>Quoted on-line as coming from from the Boston Globe 2/8.</p>

<p>

Summers said he had recused himself from the case, but Abernathy pressed him to express an opinion. According to several professors, Summers then said he did not have sufficient knowledge of the facts in the case.</p>

<p>Many professors let out an audible groan or rolled their eyes, professors said.</p>

<p>''There was shock and consternation," at his answer, music professor Kay Shelemay said.</p>

<p>Although they refused to comment on the record, several people said they did not believe Summers’s answer, considering he and Shleifer are such close friends, and Summers gave a deposition in the government lawsuit.

</p>

<p>The critical article on the topic is at:<a href=“http://mparent7777.livejournal.com/5832992.html[/url]”>http://mparent7777.livejournal.com/5832992.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Also take a look at the following:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.economicprincipals.com/issues/04.09.05.html[/url]”>http://www.economicprincipals.com/issues/04.09.05.html&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://www.thenation.com/doc/19980601/wedel[/url]”>http://www.thenation.com/doc/19980601/wedel&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[w1cked]

<p>You know they hate him because he suggested that women are not as good in math and science. Not unexpected; diversity in colleges is fine unless its a diversity of opinion.</p>

[tsdad]

<p>This is what a college president should be:</p>

<p>

At his best he tried to shake up Harvard, to make it a better home for undergraduates and academic excellence. He wanted students to be scienti fically literate. He pushed campus growth into Allston, and laid plans to make Harvard the leading center of stem cell research. And he wanted to break down the old boundaries that still separate Harvard’s many schools.

</p>

<p>But he was also this and this is why he failed:</p>

<p>

At his worst, Summers could be a bully. He stepped on toes. He set fires where he could have shed light. And at times the worth of his ideas was smothered by arrogance.

</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2006/02/22/harvards_brief_era/[/url]”>http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2006/02/22/harvards_brief_era/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>To be a college president is to be a leader. A college president must inspire confidence and be able work with a whole number of diverse and often competing constituencies. It’s one of the toughest jobs in the country. Good judgment and thoughtfulness is required. </p>

<p>The resignation wasn’t about politics. Summers just didn’t measure up to the task.</p>

[Alumother]

<p>tsdad, as I said on the Harvard board, my father was for years a professor and fairly high level administrator at a large prestigious West Coast university. He is also a Harvard grad, undergrad all the way to Ph.D. And he’s a student of the American university system. </p>

<p>He has been saying exactly what you just said for the past two years - before any of the flap about women scientists etc.</p>

<p>Summers just wasn’t a capable enough leader for an institution like Harvard. It will probably take them 1-2 years to recover fully but all will be well.</p>

[baseballmom]

<p>He measured up UNTIL he made comments that weren’t politically correct! Wasn’t that the beginning of the end?</p>