Shots In The Dark

Marcella Bombardieri, the Globe's education writer, weighs in with a piece on Larry's management style. Her argument: Summers' critics feel that he runs the university like a CEO or, some say, an "autocrat."

Marcella's piece is fine, though it reads like she's still having trouble getting people to detail specific incidents in which Summers exhibits such behavior. But I think that people are really dancing around the issue. It's not just that Summers runs Harvard like a CEO; there are plenty of chief executive officers who are inclusive, lead by example, inspiring, a firm hand in a velvet glove. I think you could find plenty of CEOs who could make the transition to university president without the carnage that Harvard has seen since Summers arrived.

So forget about the CEO language. That's not the fundamental issue. The fundamental issue is that people see Summers as a really bad CEO, whose management style actually detracts from the work of the university.

The truth is, Summers' critics see him as an arrogant, bullying, inconsiderate jerk—the Michael Eisner of Harvard. They don't think a man with this personality can lead the university. And they doubt his ability, at this point in his life, to change. After all, he was supposed to have changed already—when critics in Washington leveled exactly the same charge against Summers. And that makeover obviously didn't take.

But this is a tough thing to say in public. It can sound petty; it can make the accuser look weak,. It opens the faculty up to criticism from conservative pundits who rush to defend Summers merely because some apparently left-wing faculty are criticizing him, regardless of the substance of their complaints.

Here's Harvard's problem, though: If the faculty don't articulate this complaint, they'll lose the PR war. They might lose it even if they do. Either way, when the dust is settled, the anti-Summers feelings won't change. It'd be as if Howell Raines stayed on at the New York Times despite the strength of the feeling against him.

I'm not saying an organization can't function in such an environment. Summers is a man of remarkable energy who desperately wants to revive his presidency, and I have no doubt that he's going to work extremely hard to do so.

But how well Harvard functions in this such an environment...

At some point you do have to wonder if Summers is fighting for his job more because of the personal stake he has in keeping it, or because he really, truly believes that for him to stay on is in the best interests of the university. Now, that would be an interesting question for one of Summers' critics to pose this Tuesday.