[Assam] Harvard Magazine: President Summers' Change Game

[umesh sharma]

Cover Article
Summers in Summary

A presidency, and the University, in perspective
http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/090627.html


          

Lawrence H. Summers brought to the Harvard presidency
prodigious energy and a penchant for framing the
University’s future in visionary terms. Taking the
long view forward from a millennium just begun,
Summers discerned an “inflection point” in the
institution’s history. He told audiences in Cambridge,
across the country, and around the world, “I’m
convinced that, when the history of our period is
written three centuries from now
the major stories”
would be the terms on which the newly developing and
the developed nations come together, and the
transformative effect of life-sciences
research—particularly in its biomedical applications.
Given the “more worldly” nature of contemporary
universities, as he described them in his October 2001
installation address, Harvard, in its role of training
leaders, could be at the epicenter of those epochal
changes.

>From meetings in Massachusetts Hall to unprecedented
projection through the news media, Summers waged a
highly personal campaign to align Harvard with his
agenda. University priorities became presidential
business—for example, in his 2003 Commencement
address, when Summers compared the Faculty of Arts and
Sciences’ then-nascent review of its undergraduate
curriculum to “similar projects of renewal—in the eras
of Presidents Eliot, Lowell, Conant, and Bok.” (And
the result, as he envisioned it, would hold
“far-reaching implications not just for the University
but for higher education and society more generally.”)
Animated by his belief that “what is new is most
important for us,” Summers sought comparable acts of
“renewal” across the University. By that he meant “not
just doing new things and growing larger,” but also
“moving beyond activities that have run their course,
being selective and disciplined about the most
critical paths to pursue.” All this he meant to do at
top speed, describing himself in his final
Commencement speech as “a man in hurry.”

It is far too early to put into historical context the
twenty-seventh president’s agenda, or progress made
toward realizing Summers’s goals during his five-year
tenure. Between the announcement of his resignation on
February 21 (reported in “A Presidency’s Early End,”
May-June, page 59) and his departure from office on
June 30, Summers addressed the results of his work and
his thoughts about the institution. For an interview
highlighting those perspectives, see "Harvard Can
Change the World." Alongside his views, it is possible
to make preliminary observations about some issues,
with an eye toward Harvard’s future.




Summers assumed office at a propitious moment for
proposing aggressive growth. With the conclusion of
the University Campaign in December 1999 and strong
investment returns, the endowment was valued at $18.3
billion in 2001—nearly four times the $4.7 billion on
hand when Neil L. Rudenstine became president a decade
earlier. The institution had spent heavily during the
1990s to work off a backlog of deferred facilities
maintenance. Now, with the added resources in hand,
Harvard began the new century reporting large
operating surpluses in its annual financial
statements. The Corporation distributed funds and
encouraged the faculties to complete plans for and
begin constructing science buildings and offices, to
set about filling them with more professors, and to
expand student aid. Even with the temporary decline in
investment returns early in the decade, the central
administration’s endowment funds grew from $2.15
billion in 2001 to $2.93 billion in 2005 (the latest
figure published), and the special Allston assessment
on schools’ endowments generated about $100 million
per year for further land acquisition, planning, and
predevelopment work there. Harvard was in an expansive
mood, and as he looked to define and fund priorities,
the new president could proceed without any immediate
pressure to launch another time-consuming capital
campaign.

Global Harvard. As an economist interested in
international problems, who came to the University
presidency from service at the World Bank and as
Secretary of the Treasury, Summers emphasized the
institution’s global reach. That interest played a
role in his 2002 appointment of William C. Kirby to
the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) deanship.
Kirby, an historian of China especially interested in
that country’s international connections, had himself
studied (and taught) abroad and was a leader in
liberalizing the faculty’s procedures for College
students to do so. President and dean regularly
highlighted opportunities available to undergraduates:
expanded Harvard summer-school offerings in other
countries, preapproved academic programs elsewhere,
and research, internship, public-service, and work
options around the world. An Office of International
Programs was prominently created in University Hall,
and a newly appointed vice provost for international
affairs began coordinating policy and programs for the
University, giving an institutional focus to all the
outreach. At last count, about 1,000 undergraduates
per year were doing something abroad.

Beyond urging others to explore the world, Summers, an
indefatigable traveler, carried the Crimson banner to
places familiar and on the frontier: Beijing, Tokyo,
Santiago, São Paulo, and Dubai—not to mention visits
to Israel, and to the World Economic Forum in Davos
each January. He also hosted Harvard Alumni
Association gatherings, complete with faculty panels,
in London, Mexico City, and New Delhi. In some of
those locations, the peripatetic president practically
crossed paths with the leaders of Columbia, Penn,
Princeton, and Yale, all of whom are also projecting
their institutions’ global presence. Such
globe-trotting is the norm for research-university
heads today.

Science. From the outset, President Summers
highlighted scientific education and research as among
his chief priorities. Faculty members are addressing
the former issue as they recreate introductory
courses, reformulate the College’s life-sciences
concentrations and FAS doctoral programs, explore more
engaging ways of teaching, rethink the curriculum
generally, and involve students in their laboratories
(see John Harvard’s Journal, July-August, "The
Excitment of Science", "Quantum Leap for Engineering,"
and "Reconfiguring the Curriculum, and this issue,
"Supporting Young Scientists"). Intellectually,
Summers focused on multidisciplinary, multiparticipant
research projects, where new tools in genomics,
quantitative analysis, and computing, for example,
promise biomedical advances. Personally, he related
that potential to his own experience in being treated
for Hodgkin’s disease 20 years ago. Institutionally,
he addressed the challenge of discerning “how the
University is able to adapt its traditional structures
to most effectively engage the adventure of science”—a
quest that led him to focus on launching research
entities outside the existing schools and departments,
and on making science much of the focus of the Allston
campus.

Thus, Harvard joined with MIT to form the Broad
Institute, a research center for huge genomics
programs. Under Provost Steven E. Hyman, scientists
proposed collaborative research programs and suggested
housing them in a million square feet of new Allston
laboratories. Given current federal limits on funding
stem-cell research, Harvard faculty members formed
their own stem-cell institute, which aims to be an
early tenant of a 500,000-square-foot lab complex
announced in February (the first tangible Allston
project). Other institutes are in the pipeline.

But there have been bumps in the road. The focus on
multi-investigator, large-scale science delighted some
researchers, but left out many other Harvard
scientists: principal investigators running lab
groups. Their activities also continue to expand. FAS
alone got the green light to increase laboratory space
by one- third, at a cost of several hundred million
dollars, and fill it with dozens of new
neuroscientists, engineers, and biologists, each of
whom will need to fit up a lab—investments that will
pressure the entire budget for years to come. Sorting
out financial resources, administration, and teaching
responsibilities among departments and schools and new
research-focused institutes is uncharted terrain. A
solution has recently been proposed by the deans whose
schools embrace science, and a group of faculty
members. Their report (see "Sweeping Change for
Science"), embracing all science at Harvard, envisions
a huge new interdisciplinary effort, with control over
appointments, funds, and physical space vested in an
academic entity, not the central administration.

However these issues are resolved, and whatever the
formidable costs, Harvard’s rapid science expansion
will continue, preoccupying future presidents.
Advanced scientific techniques and increased federal
funding affect all research universities: witness
multiple new science and medical buildings at Yale, a
wave of construction at Princeton, the University of
Chicago’s new Center for Integrative Science,
Stanford’s Bio-X program. Harvard’s tradition of
independent schools and dual campuses may complicate
matters, but the fundamental impulses are common.

Allston. The land assembled in Allston under three
presidents may represent outsized potential for campus
development, but once again, other universities have
similar hopes and hurdles: landlocked Columbia is
looking north into Harlem, and the University of
Pennsylvania may extend east toward Center City.

Summers seemed galvanized by the “historic opportunity
to create a new Harvard campus for centuries to come”
that, done well, would earn “the gratitude of future
generations.” Seeking to speed development, rather
than pursue more gradual, organic growth, he initially
explored an all-science campus, but retreated in face
of concerns about separating disciplines, removing
research from teaching, and delaying urgently needed
science facilities already planned elsewhere. The
vision he put forth in 2003 mixes uses: laboratories,
new education and public-health campuses, cultural
facilities, and undergraduate Houses (the last item
controversial, if meant to increase the size of the
College; less so if seen as a site to relocate the
Quad Houses, which would then be renovated for
graduate-student use). Refinement of those ideas with
the help of a master-planning firm has brought the
Allston concepts forward for discussion with Boston
regulators. The only specific siting decisions made so
far are for the first science facility and a building
renovation to provide swing space while the Fogg Art
Museum is upgraded (see Brevia, July-August, page 67).
Formation and staffing of an Allston Development
Group—reporting to the president and apart from other
real-estate operations—have created an institutional
home to pursue the work as future presidents direct
and finances permit.

Access. In his installation address, Summers proposed
extending the College’s need-blind admission, and the
affiliated financial-aid grants, to graduate and
professional schools, particularly those training
students for lower-paying occupations. As doctoral
fellowships, public-service scholarships, and low-cost
loans ramped up, he then advocated a new
undergraduate-aid initiative. Research at the Century
Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and
elsewhere had documented the underrepresentation of
lower-income students at elite colleges and
universities. Summers’s February 2004 commitment of $2
million of University funds annually eliminated
parental contributions (but not student obligations)
toward the cost of attending the College for families
with incomes less than $40,000, and reduced the
parental bill for families with incomes between
$40,000 and $60,000. By highlighting the economic
trends, formulating a Harvard program, and attracting
news coverage of its unveiling, he helped make such
aid a priority for higher education. Peer institutions
from Yale to Stanford emulated Harvard’s initiative,
and even raised the ante, encouraging more
applications from and enrollment of lower-income
students.

The extension of the program last March revealed a
different, more internal story—one of many instances
of the conflicting priorities, common in large
institutions, that became acute at Harvard during the
past two years. FAS announced that it would award $90
million in undergraduate scholarship aid during the
2006-2007 academic year—an increase of about $5.25
million from the prior year. Days later, the central
administration announced separately that it would
augment its lower-income thresholds to $60,000 and
$80,000, respectively, using University funds to pay
the additional $2.4-million annual cost. That the
policies were not coordinated suggested the frosty
relationship between University Hall and Massachusetts
Hall—on matters ranging from curriculum change to
spending on student social spaces. FAS focused on its
core aid program, funding for which has increased 65
percent (about $35 million in annual spending) in six
years, markedly reducing students’ debt burden upon
graduation. The administration pursued its own layer
of College financial aid, identified particularly with
the president.

The next FAS dean and president will have to sort out
the appropriate allocation of financial aid between
the College and the Graduate School of Arts and
Sciences, which has worked hard in recent years just
to achieve parity with peer schools’ financial offers.
Meanwhile, several of the professional schools can
legitimately claim to have large unmet needs, for
low-income or international students, and those who
seek public-service careers.

Undergraduate education. The high priority given by
president and FAS dean alike to bettering students’
academic experience yielded mixed results.
Undergraduates now have an additional semester to
explore the curriculum before choosing their
concentrations, and most of them will have more
opportunity to take a smaller class taught by senior
faculty (in freshman seminars and during their junior
years) in even the most heavily enrolled
concentrations. But as it became clear that the major
substantive question (what to offer for general
education, if the Core curriculum is abandoned) would
not be resolved in the waning months of the Summers
and Kirby administrations, faculty members’ interest
in the discussion diminished. Although Derek Bok has
only a year as interim president, his experience when
FAS adopted the Core curriculum, and his recent
research on undergraduate education, suggest that with
his encouragement, FAS may be able to engage the
question anew, and more fruitfully, this academic
year.

Diversity. As noted, President Summers sought to
expand international contacts and to reverse the
underenrollment of lower-income students—important
forms of diversifying Harvard. But he adopted a much
lower profile on issues of racial and gender
diversity, a bedrock concern of his predecessors Derek
Bok and Neil Rudenstine. Following his disagreements
with Fletcher University Professor Cornel West,
Summers issued a statement in January 2002 expressing
his “pride in Harvard’s longstanding commitment to
diversity.” Late that year and early the next, as
educators nationwide rallied to defend the University
of Michigan when the Supreme Court heard legal
challenges to its admissions procedures, discussion
raged in Massachusetts Hall about what position
Harvard would take, until Summers signed on to a
supportive amicus brief crafted by Laurence H. Tribe
(now Loeb University Professor) and filed on behalf of
eight institutions. In 2004, as FAS grew rapidly but
the proportion of its tenure offers to women declined,
concerned women faculty members who communicated with
the president in writing and personally came away with
the impression that he neither shared their views nor
endorsed any institutional response. In conversation,
he raised objections to affirmative action or
diversity programs on the grounds that they might
compromise the merit selection of scholars or cause
injury by labeling people as the beneficiaries of a
certain privilege.

This was the background when the president’s early
2005 remarks on the underrepresentation of women in
academic science and engineering prompted furious
debate within FAS and provoked worldwide news
coverage. The furor over these issues contributed to,
but was not the sole factor in, the faculty’s
no-confidence vote in Summers that spring. The task
forces on women faculty and on women in science and
engineering he established—and the $50 million he
devoted to implementing their recommendations, under a
senior vice provost for faculty development and
diversity—may in time set new standards for
universities’ ability to support the most
distinguished faculty members and to plug the leaks in
the “pipeline” for academic scientists (see
"Developing a Diverse Faculty"). But Summers chose to
avoid highlighting these subjects almost completely
during his final year in office.

The exchange of ideas. “The university is open to all
ideas, but it is committed to the skepticism that is
the hallmark of education,” Summers said in his
installation address. “All ideas are worthy of
consideration here—but not all perspectives are
equally valid.” He added, “Our special obligation is
to seek what is true”—a value scholars surely embrace,
and a practice the president himself had famously
pursued in rough-and-tumble exchanges when he was an
economics professor. But the application of those
principles came to seem blurred. In the controversy
over Zayed M. Yasin’s senior English address at the
2002 Commencement—he proposed to use the word jihad in
his title—many observers felt that the president was
not supportive of free speech. His Morning Prayers
address that fall, characterizing protests aimed at
Israel as “anti-Semitic in their effect if not their
intent,” struck signers of a divestiture petition,
among others, as an act of ostracism, not of debate.

More broadly, these and other incidents—combined with
Summers’s focus on the “new” and on science and his
championing of quantitative analysis (“What you count,
counts,” he said)—made many faculty members feel that
he simply did not care deeply about their kinds of
research or fields, or about the broad scope of modern
universities, with their museums and libraries. These
concerns emerged sharply during the FAS faculty
meetings in early 2005. The most charged speeches
concerned the president’s withholding of the
transcript of his remarks on women in science (he
subsequently released it), attacks by commentators
sympathetic to Summers on participants at that
conference who held different views, and the question
of his personal openness to discussion—statements that
clearly left him shaken.

Administration and power. The Summers administration
was strongly centralizing. Massachusetts Hall added
two new vice presidencies (for human resources and for
policy), and another, in effect, for Allston—itself
the most centralizing of all University priorities in
its planning and prospective allocation of billions of
dollars and new facilities. The provost’s office
created nearly a dozen senior positions (and their
staffs), for functions ranging from science planning
to technology licensing. Fundraising was consolidated
in important ways, and in the absence of a unified
Harvard campaign was focused heavily on the
administration’s science priorities. The use of
distributions from the endowment, the fiscal lifeblood
for most of the schools, was more tightly controlled.

New priorities and programs were presented to the
Harvard community and beyond as initiatives of the
president himself. Summers, long experienced in
dealing with the news media, hired a personal press
officer, and was frequently quoted in major
publications worldwide. Able to speak at length
without notes, he did so on a multitude of subjects.
>From his first days on campus, moreover, he reached
beyond deans to their staffs and subordinates for
information, and weighed in on decanal personnel—in
some cases, such as the College administration,
prompting wholesale changes. He used the power of
appointment vigorously—for example, moving to bring in
a new Harvard Law School dean, atypically, at the
beginning of a capital campaign—but not always
satisfactorily, as his fallings-out with his FAS and
education-school deans demonstrated. The demands of
working in Massachusetts Hall were great, too:
Summers’s chiefs of staff and other assistants turned
over repeatedly, clouding lines of communication to
the University at large.

At present, it appears that the authority of Harvard’s
central administration has been strengthened, and that
of the schools’ deans has been diluted. Given the
University’s history and structure, it is not yet
certain whether the new distribution of power is
optimal, or even whether it is stable. Derek Bok and
Jeremy R. Knowles, who have temporarily resumed their
former positions as president and FAS dean, may help
clarify these matters for their successors. In the
meantime, as interim leaders, their management will be
divorced from the issues of politics and style that
became attached to the Summers administration.



Charles William Eliot transformed Harvard and American
higher education during his 40-year presidency, from
1869 to 1909. In his embrace of the same job, Lawrence
Summers sought equally great challenges and
opportunities: to realize the promise of whole new
fields of scientific research; to build on Harvard’s
identity as the world leader in scholarship and
training for the professions and public service; and
to embed those gains in an audacious new campus of
unprecedented scale. His tenure cut short, he
acknowledged in his Commencement address on June 8
that “I have loved my work here, and I am sad to leave
it. There was much more I wanted, felt inspired, to
do.” It must be a bittersweet consolation that the new
University Professorship to which he has been
appointed bears Eliot’s name.

The basic issues Summers raised—about science and
education, about financial aid and future
development—appeared on the University agenda before
he came to Massachusetts Hall, and remain there after
him, albeit in different forms and institutional
shapes. To his successor will fall the task of moving
toward more of the answers and, importantly, mounting
the capital campaign to realize agreed-upon goals.

Summers provoked discussion from the top—not a trivial
cultural shift for a complex place as decentralized as
Harvard has long been. On his way out, he expressed
frustration about what he saw as institutional rigor
mortis: for example, why hadn’t FAS created or
eliminated a department in nearly four decades? From
their perspective, many professors countered that
those forms mattered little: did anyone really think
that the work being done in the biology department
today had not evolved enormously during that interval?
The intellectual renewal he sought, in this sense, is
always under way, though not always precisely in the
ways or at the pace he preferred.

Such debates, messy though they may seem, are good for
the institution—so long as they do not immobilize the
teaching and research that are Harvard’s daily reason
for being. After the tumult of the past years,
professors and students are probably ready to move on,
engaging themselves in the life of this distinctive
community, and willing to work with new leadership
that makes them feel included in defining and
fulfilling the University’s mission in the years
ahead.                       

~John S. Rosenberg


Umesh Sharma
5121 Lackawanna ST
College Park, MD 20740 USA

Current temp. address: 5649 Yalta Place , Vancouver, Canada

 1-202-215-4328 [Cell Phone]
Canada # (607) 221-9433

Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005

weblog: http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/


		
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