The Real Story?
One reason why I'm appalled by Summers' handling of this AIDS grant is because I don't believe the proffered excuse that he was worried about legal risks. The other three institutions which had received money from the federal government weren't worried, and they started spending the grant money almost immediately after receiving it. After all, people were dying.
So what was really going on? Well, there's substantial, if circumstantial, evidence that Summers just didn't like the fact he didn't control a massive federal grant given to one of Harvard's schools—and he refused to let the program be implemented until he did control it.
Start with my own reporting, on page 305 of Harvard Rules: "In the spring of 2004, Barry Bloom, dean of the School of Public Health, infuriated Summers by announcing that the school had received a $100-million grant from the federal government without first informing Summers or including the president's name in the relevant press release. According to several sources familiar with the incident, Summers was so enraged that, at a subsequent dinner attended by both Bloom and him, the president insisted on being somewhere he could not see the dean. (Asked for comment, Bloom said, 'I have the greatest respect for President Summers.')"
The Boston Globe and Harvard Crimson have both detailed Summers' attempts to wrest control of the grant away from Dr. Phyllis J. Kanki, apparently because Summers didn't think Kanki was competent to handle such a large grant. (She is, after all, a woman in science.)
Never mind that the federal program which distributed the grant money was called the "President's
Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief."
(That would be President Bush; italics added.)
Or that grant applicants were given a month to write proposals, due to the urgency of the situation. People were dying.
Larry Summers held up the purchase of AIDS drugs for dying people for—depending on how you calculate the delay—five to seven months. And one very possible reason is because he was furious that he was not given credit for bringing the money to Harvard, and he did not control the distribution of it.
In other words, because his ego was bruised.
This story is a tragedy.
