The Allies Buckle Under Pressure
Marcella Bombardieri has a solid piece in the Globe about Summers' allies starting to lose faith that the president can govern.
In the second graf of the piece, Bombardieri rightly puts her strongest quote:
''I'm a little sad and a little nervous," said Larry Katz, an economics professor and a friend of Summers. ''Here is someone I think is a brilliant scholar, and a person of great skill and integrity, but he seems to have failed to connect with so many other bright scholars on campus."
Asked if Summers could still govern successfully, Katz said, ''I think it's unclear. Everyone has to think about what's in the best interest of the university, not the specific interests of any one person."
If that's the strongest answer Katz can give—"everyone has to think about what's in the best interest of the university"—then Summers truly is in freefall.
David Gergen—surprise—backpedals away from Summers as well. Bombardieri writes that he "stressed that he didn't know the full story behind the grievances of Summers's critics."
(If that's the case, then why was he such a steadfast Summers supporter for so long?)
The Corporation ''is going to have to consider its fiduciary responsibility, to consider what's in the best interests of Harvard," Gergen added.
In other words—Larry Summers is no longer in the best interests of Harvard.
Steve Pinker adds that Summers has made it hard for his defenders to defend him by not sticking up for himself. For example, the curricular review suffered from Summers' withdrawal and a subsequent lack of "vision," Pinker argues. Given that the review was led by Summers for three years before Summers exited from it, and it was a disaster throughout, this remark would fall under the category of historical revisionism.
The 2/28 vote of no-confidence will never happen. (If it does, every member of the Corporation should instantly proffer his or her resignation.)
We are in the endgame now.
