Shots In The Dark: Larry Summers on the Slopes

Monday, February 20, 2024

Larry Summers on the Slopes

As mentioned below, Larry Summers is in Utah skiing this holiday weekend.

Doesn't much sound like him, does it? So let's consider what this really means. Possibilities include:

1) This ski weekend was long-planned and Summers saw no point in canceling it.

2) Summers is under a lot of pressure and hastily decided to get away from campus. Which would be understandable.

3) Summers is pulling a Washington move, trying to look relaxed and above the fray by going on vacation.

4) Summers is giving Harvard a raised middle finger to the effect of, "Do what you want, I'm outta here."

Option #1 is what Summers' apologists John Longbrake and Steve Hyman are selling. That argument is complicated by the fact that Summers blew off a meeting with the Institute of Politics fellows and an announcement with the mayor of Boston regarding Allston developments.

The IOP meeting suggests that Mass Hall is really, really screwed up right now. These people can not get their stories straight.

According to one IOP fellow who e-mailed the Crimson, "We were told he had a meeting that ran long."

Which turned out to mean that Summers had already gone skiing. (Evidence of option #4, to my mind.) Which means that someone just lied to the IOP.

The existence of that excuse does suggest that Summers was planning on going to the meeting until he decided to go skiing. (Options 2, 3 and 4.)

If the ski trip was long-planned, why was the IOP meeting on Summers' schedule at all?

“I made the mistake,” Summers' spokesman John Longbrake told the Crimson.

Huh. So the president's press secretary is also his scheduler? I don't think so.

Longbrake needs to be very careful lest he join the long list of people whose integrity and career have suffered after close professional association with Larry Summers. He's clearly falling on his sword , trying to take responsibility for Summers' apparently last-minute decision to blow off the K-School meeting by claiming it was a scheduling snafu.

Longbrake has had good relations with the press by trying to be forthcoming and not trying to spin the unspinnable, as his predecessor, Lucie McNeil, did. (McNeil's once-promising career: severely damaged by working for Summers.)

Don't ruin it now, John. When this mess is all over, no one's going to remember that you were loyal to Summers—except, perhaps, the people who don't like him—and you'll have to live with the fact that you compromised yourself.

Steve Hyman, who says that Summers was not at the Allston event because the timing of it was dictated by Mayor Tom Menino's schedule, is too far gone to be saved. That excuse is laughable—not least because Summers and Menino don't much care for each other, and Harvard wouldn't want to snub the mayor by, say, calling him up and saying that Larry Summers can't come to a joint announcement because he's in Utah skiing.

A year ago, Summers checked out of the curricular review. Is he now doing the same with Allston?

More evidence of option #4...

Which, don't get me wrong, is far from a sign that Summers plans to resign. More likely he's daring Harvard to fire him..... Does Summers have something on members of the Corporation? Something that he's threatening to leak, if he's not happy with the outcome of this controversy?

¶ 10:15 AM

Comments:

Well, The Crimson did specifically say that the IOP meeting was scheduled for early afternoon, so it's possible the meeting was planned for before he left campus to go skiing, meaning it was not necessarily a lie.

Thinking Summers has something on a member of the corporation seems a tad conspiracy-theorish (a la Andre Shleifer having something on Summers himself). Perhaps he simply thinks that the corporation would be loathe to fire him, even given the likelihood of a second no-confidence vote, because they think running the president out on a rail (even a well-deserved one) would look worse than leaving him in. I don't know if it would, but one could imagine it would be somewhat more difficult to find a good replacement candidate in the current environment.

# posted by Anonymous : 11:37 AM

A few comments:
1. Crimson people, please stop posting comments. You've got a whole publication for yourselves, which you have already turned into mere campaign literature as opposed to a newspaper. Give everyone else something of a break from your poorly informed opinions.
2. The Globe's coverage is lame considering how much access they've had. It appears that their NYTimes-trained editors are killing interesting stories. It's a good thing that the WSJ is getting involved. Golden in the WSJ managed to "scoop" Marcela Bombardieri even though she had many times as much information. That's what story-killing is.

# posted by Anonymous : 11:47 AM

Anonymous 2, I'm anonymous 1, and I'm not on the crimson...

# posted by Anonymous : 11:47 AM

Anonymous 1: Fair point about the meeting, but I'll bet it was a lie that the reason Summers didn't go to the IOP was because he was in a meeting that ran long.

A bit conspiracy-theorish, I concede. Summers may well just be daring the Corporation to fire him for the reason you suggest.

As for a good replacement candidate, that's easy: Either Derek Bok or Nan Keohane, two respected former presidents, could serve for a year while a new presidential search is conducted.

# posted by richard : 11:56 AM

A New Angle:

Apparently one question asked by a Corporation member was this: How would the Faculty react to Shleifer leaving and Summers staying?
That might be an intriguing way to pacify tha Faculty...

# posted by Anonymous : 3:22 PM

I don't think that would do it.

# posted by richard : 3:23 PM

Whatever the merits of your theories on the ski trip, your bit about John Longbrake is unfair. He is not, nor does he claim to be Summers' scheduler. His quote about making a mistake was in direct reference to Summers' meeting with the Crimson editorial board, which he is in charge of coordinating. It was certainly not a lie.

But agreed that Summers' ski trip and the abrupt cancellations were odd, and perhaps most importantly, did not look good.

# posted by Anonymous : 4:13 PM

Richard,

You reported a while ago that Zach Seward was taking a leave of absence from the Crimson. Any follow up on this? It seems more than a little odd that someone so in the thick of reporting about Mass. Hall would leave at this point. Perhaps Zach knows some things he'd prefer not to discuss? Or his position at the Crimson became uncomfortable for some other reason?

# posted by Anonymous : 4:20 PM

Zach Seward is taking a leave of absence from the Crimson because he is on academic probation: not enough academic work and too much newspaper work. There is a story in the Harvard Independent.

John Longbrake will have to go with Larry Summers. He has been taking a salary from Harvard, not Larry, yet he repeatedly lies for Larry and deliberately undercuts the reputation of the university when it serves Larry. Case in point: John Longbrake repeatedly tells the press that FAS is only one of Harvard's schools, somehow failing to note that FAS faculty represent the vast majority of Harvard's teaching/salaried faculty (i.e. not counting the people who are on soft money and would have to leave if their grants ended). There are single FAS departments that are larger than most of the other Harvard schools! John Longbrake also portrays the FAS faculty as the "undergraduate faculty" as though this were an insult: the FAS faculty are not good enough to grant professional degrees apparently. This is nasty and misleading. The FAS is the only school that can grant the PhD, Harvard's highest degree. The professional schools do wonderful work, but we'd be kidding ourselves if we said that their standards were uniformly high. Also, Harvard College is the core and single most selective part of the university. Being associated with it should not be belittled.

John Longbrake, if you want to work for Larry Summers, ask him to employ you as a personal p.r. agent. It's perfectly legal for him to hire his own p.r. person. Otherwise, please work for the university that employs you.

# posted by Anonymous : 4:42 PM

To anonymous "A new angle"

I have it on good authority that Summers himself is the source of the query about how the Faculty would react to Shleifer going and Summers staying. It may have been another member of the Corp who floated the question to the person who repeated it to the press, but Summers has been asking the question since the day after the Feb 7 fac meeting.

# posted by Anonymous : 5:14 PM

The poster who points out that Longbrake failed to cancel the meeting with the Crimson, and not the IOP, is correct. That's my mistake, and I apologize to Longbrake for it. But I stand by the suggestion that in accepting responsibility for the presence of the meeting on the president's schedule, Longbrake is trying to cover up for the fact that Summers made a last-minute decision to leave town. I also stand by the suggestion that Longbrake, who is reportedly a decent guy in a lousy position, should know better.

I also think that the poster who points out that Harvard pays Longbrake's salary, not Summers, has a good point. It's a tough position for Longbrake, who was surely hired by Summers. Perhaps the real meaning here is that Summers, in hiring people from outside the university, is really looking for people who will stick up for him, as opposed to people who will stick up for Harvard.

# posted by richard : 5:17 PM

The collective arrogance, insecurity, and vidictiveness of certain cliques within the FAS faculty is on full display in the previous post (the character attack of Mr. Longbrake), with their perceived self-importance supported through the active marginalization of their academic peers at Harvard's other graduate and professional schools. Their actions not only serve to weaken the University, but contribute to further fragmentation within their own faculty.

# posted by Anonymous : 5:19 PM

To the poster above: What cliques are you referring to?

I think the two posters arguing here probably agree on more than it might sound—it's just a question of degree.

It does seem to me that Harvard markets the FAS (and the college) as its heart and soul, but Summers downplays the FAS when it rebels against him.

I also think that it's probably true that in some places (the K School, the Ed School) you find significant variation on the merits of the faculty. But the biz school, the medical school, the law school—pretty impressive people there.

But the folks at those other places may have a different impression of Summers because they deal with him so little. I understand the FAS frustration when the Crimson says, "Other schools at Harvard don't feel this way, why do you?", when the FAS has far more interaction with Summers than any other faculty.

# posted by richard : 5:29 PM

hey, when are you going to make fun of the Crimson's asinine poll? The write-up is particularly bad. "Slightly" more males than females responded? They've got a twelve point differential in favor of men! Gee, you think men might be more favorable than women to a president who hasn't gotten around to insulting their gender yet?? Nevermind the response bias...

# posted by Anonymous : 6:17 PM

Which way would you expect the response bias to go?

# posted by Anonymous : 6:40 PM

As one might discern from some previous posters, Larry Summers is very divisive.

Would one school have been pitted against another, would students have been pitted against faculty, would Jews have been pitted against non-Jews (and Jewish critics of Summers) by Derek Bok or Neil Rudinstein?

How the mighty (Harvard) are fallen.

# posted by Anonymous : 6:46 PM

I think that's an excellent point.

# posted by richard : 7:47 PM

I think it's unclear which way the response bias would go, but I would tend to think that it would somewhat favor those who strongly support Summers, since they are more motivated to respond. I imagine many undergraduates find him vaguely distasteful, but not so strongly that they'd bother responding to a survey.

Whatever the level of bias in the sample, I wouldn't seriously dispute that Summers has a higher favorable rating among undergrads than among faculty. But that's all it is -- it's a favorability rating, not organized support of any kind. In any case, undergrad support doesn't matter, fortunately or unfortunately. The Corporation doesn't listen to students about anything, and they're not going to start now.

# posted by Anonymous : 8:08 PM

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