After the Deluge, More Questions
So Summers survives. I don't know if faculty upheaval alone could ever have led to Summers' ouster, since one of the underlying rationales of his presidency is to diminish the faculty's power. But after Tuesday's meeting, the anger seems to have dissipated slightly—or at least to have been put on pause.
Still, the fact that Summers will keep his job hardly means that the story is over. In fact, now the really interesting part begins. I can think of at least half a dozen questions that will be simmering for months, if not years, to come.
1) Summers has promised to be more "collegial" in his leadership style. Will he keep his promise?
Let's face it: Larry Summers has never been the type to lead through diplomacy and gentle suasion. Sharing credit has never been his forte. Can he really change now? Or is it just a matter of time before he lapses back into old habits? Because you know that, on some level not very far under the surface, he's mad as hell at being put through this embarrassing public trial.
2) What happens with alumni giving?
The Crimson runs a piece today suggesting that many wealthy alums are standing behind Summers, which isn't surprising: Powerful people tend to bond with other powerful people, and they instinctively dislike popular uprisings. But not all alums have that reaction: I've spoken with a number of alumni, both female and male, who are deeply unhappy with Summers.
Harvard is in the early phases of a massive (a rumored $10 billion) capital campaign. Normally Summers would lead it. Can he really play that role now? And if he doesn't, who can?
3) What happens with the task forces on women headed by professors Barbara Grosz and Evelyn Hammond?
Those women are in a tough spot. They're respected scholars who take the issues surrounding women in academia with the utmost seriousness. But it's hard to imagine that female academics at other universities will eagerly consider the prospect of joining up with Larry Summers' Harvard.
Harvard has traditionally resisted the bidding wars for high-profile academics that other universities engage in. Its thinking: Harvard's reputation pays its own dividend. I wonder if one consequence of Summers' remarks about women won't be that the university is forced to drop that aloofness and start throwing some money around.
In
Harvard Rules, I detail how Summers' assault upon the Af-Am department ultimately cost the university a million bucks, as Summers channeled an alumnus' contribution to a thinktank headed by Professor Skip Gates. How much will Summers—and other Harvard alums—have to pony up now?
4) Will Harvard see a brain drain?
Marcella Bombardieri in the Boston Globe recently wrote a piece suggesting that other universities may be poaching Harvard faculty members. Makes sense to me. Faculty members want to be in an environment where the president is collegial because it's in his or her nature—not because he promises to be lest he lose his job.
5) What happens with the curricular review? Few may remember, but the much-hyped review was on the agenda the day of the first outraged faculty meeting. This thing has been slouching toward Bethlehem for a long time now. To mix metaphors, it's always been a Potemkin village, a half-hearted intellectual exercise gussied up for passing journalists and alums. It's hard to imagine that the faculty will suddenly get fired up about the review. And for it to succeed, they need to be.
6) How does Summers rebuild his reputation?
A week or so ago the New Yorker ran a cartoon showing several women dining out. "I hear we're all getting valentines from Lawrence Summers," the caption read. That's just one out of many examples of how the Harvard president has become the object of popular ridicule. Fair or not, those images don't go away easily. Just ask Jimmy the Greek.
There's a wonderful irony here. One of the reasons the Harvard Corporation picked Summers was because it felt embarrassed by Neil Rudenstine. Summers' predecessor collapsed from exhaustion in early 1994, and was subsequently on the cover of
Newsweek for a story about overworked Americans. For some members of the Harvard community, and especially Corporation member Hanna Gray, this was an unacceptable embarrassment to the university. And so Gray led the drive to choose Summers, who was thought to be far too tough ever to mortify Harvard thusly.
Funny how things work out.
