Summers to quit as Harvard president

[msnicolea]

BOSTON (Reuters) - Harvard University President Lawrence Summers was expected to resign this week after a turbulent five years of leading the prestigious school, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

Two people familiar with the situation told the newspaper that the former U.S. Treasury secretary was expected to announce his resignation in advance of a second faculty vote on a motion of no confidence in his leadership on February 28.

Summers, whose abrupt style has won praise and contempt since he became president in 2001, sparked controversy last year when he said innate differences between men and women may help explain why so few women work in the academic sciences.

He has since apologized repeatedly for his remarks.

But the abrupt resignation of the arts and sciences dean William Kirby, on January 27 deepened opposition against Summers. Several faculty have accused Summers of pushing Kirby out and called for his resignation at a faculty meeting this month.

The Journal said it was unclear what plan Harvard may have for naming a successor or when the resignation will take effect.

The confidence vote will be symbolic because only the seven-member governing board, the Harvard Corporation, has the power to appoint or remove the university's president. The faculty body first approved a no-confidence measure in March 2005 after Summers' remarks on women.

Quoting people familiar with the matter, the newspaper said backing for Summers the corporation, has eroded in recent weeks in the face of renewed criticism from many arts and sciences faculty members.

Summers's resignation would end the shortest stint of any Harvard president since Cornelius Felton died in 1862 after two years in office, the Journal reported.

A spokesman for Summers was not immediately available to comment.

[laurenc]

if this ends up being true, all i can say is -- whew. mama always said, think before you speak, and summers was not a man who followed mama's advice.

i seriously believe that the whole women-in-science drama that went on last year distracted the university from more pressing issues, such as curricular review and grade inflation. i mean, it's good that the publicity forced harvard and other prominent schools to revise or restate their family leave, tenure, and maternity/paternity policies, but so much of what went on was just sheer drama that was really annoying and unproductive.

and if anything, rumor had it that he wanted to shut down the program i'm in. so at the very least, i'm glad he'll be movin' out, because at least my colleagues won't be forced to go finish their degrees elsewhere. i don't know how much more i really can say about the issue at the moment, but i will say that his reasons for wanting to shut it down were full of BS.

[ysolde]

A lot of the (youngish) alumni were not exactly thrilled with Summers, which is bad news for the endowment. He was dismissive of our concerns, and was perceived (rightly or wrongly) as somewhat autocratic. All of this aside from his incredible foot in mouth incident last year, which cast the University in such bad light (this is not a world in which no publicity is bad publicity).

For those of us who came of age in the Derek Bok era, Summers was simply not the right man for the job. I am curious as to who the next president will be.

Lauren, what is your field?

[kris97]

i'm interested in what those of you who are alums think. as an outsider (but someone who went to a comparable school), i couldn't tell if all the criticism of him was warranted or overblown (or maybe both). ysolde, what kind of young alumni concerns was he dismissive of? are there particular incidents/choices that lead you to your opinion?

[ysolde]

This is just my opinion, but, in speaking to classmates of mine last year at hte reunion, we were all rather disappointed in the way he failed to answer our questions in his meeting with us, we were curious, to put it politely, as to where he planned to lead the university, and were not at all impressed with his secretive leadership style. He seems to like to spring ideas on us after decisions have been made, and many of the decisions regarding curriculum, faculty, and allocation of funds (isn't that always the bottom line?) were either too vague or too out of step with the University's traditions to sit well with those of us who graduated 10-20 years ago.

[laurenc]

ysolde -- i'm in a clinical psychology ph.d. program, i study sexual assault trauma (hence my posts in other threads that get me so riled up).

i agree that he has a tendency to spring ideas in a way that feels very invasive. like, why didn't you voice these concerns earlier? that's sort of what's happening to my program -- it's as if he just decided that our program wasn't worth it anymore, without talking to anyone on the faculty and without even knowing what it is we do.

[dionysia]

My dad's an older alumnus ('67) but he's happy about Summers resigning. ;)

Di

[ysolde]

Harvard is a very old school, with strong roots in Cambridge. Summers's plans to move large portions of the University outside of Cambridge did not sit well with many of us: it may make economic sense, but it feels like we are losing part of our identity. Would NYU still feel like NYU if we moved large parts of its campus to Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, or the Bronx? Isn't The Village part of what makes NYU NYU? That's how many of us feel about Harvard's being in Cambridge.

Summers's disagreements with members of the FAS were too public not to notice. We are Harvard. We do not have dirty laundry, and we certainly do not air it in public. My dear young woman, it simply isn't done.

Those ostentatious displays of wealth and power of his (the limo, the signing of dollar bills from when he was Secretary of the Treasury) -- most unbecoming of a Harvard man. Harvard is all about New England understatement; Summers was all about D.C. flash.

And the President does not tell the alumni where the University is going. Ever.