Larry has had enough

I read today that Lawrence Summers has announced he will step down as President of Harvard. This comes a year or so since his controversial remarks regarding women and science and more recently after the Dean of the Arts & Sciences school resigned amidst charges that Summers forced him out.

Opposition faculty groups came together to demand his resignation and gave a vote of no confidence in the wake of his remarks on women. The ill will multiplied as his presidency progressed and came increasingly at odds with faculty. His real bosses however, are the board at the Harvard Corporation who approved of the way he was running the school and as far as they were concerned, he was accomplishing quite a bit of good. The University became divided on the topic with a very vocal group of profs calling for his ouster while a more quiet group either supported him or didn't care. Students on the other hand, widely support him for his charisma and active role in their affairs.

I was working at HBS when the women in science remarks were made and supported him in a quiet way because I really didn't think he did or said anything wrong. The real reason a lot of the faculty didn't like him is because he ran the place differently than they were used to. He has a very straightforward management style more typical in the private sector or Washington than an academic setting. His ideas to revamp the undergradutate curriculum was met with a fair amount of resistance. With the tenure system and a somewhat insular environment, faculty sometimes get fussy when outsiders try to tell them what to do.

I heard on the radio this morning a couple of quotes from professors involved in the matter. An opposition leader basically called him a dictator who ruled by "fiat" rather than consensus. Then Alan Dershowitz was quoted to say that a minority group of ultra liberal profs are largely the instigators while more reasonable voices are drowned out. I have to agree with the latter opinion. Larry accomplished quite a bit as far as reorganization and campus development but he never quite got along with certain brands of faculty who resented his taking a leadership role when they thought they should have more of a voice.

His job however, was to lead the school forward; he inherited a massive endowment from his predecessor and was charged with using it to make improvements both physically and philosophically. This meant butting heads with faculty at times when they were the holdouts in a system that needed change. Unfortunately, egos were bruised, conventions were bucked and he was seen as imposing values and practices that weren't compatible with Academia when the reality was more that academia wasn't willing to accept that they could do better.