Another Thought Regarding Summers and the Donations
Responding to Zachary Seward's Wall Street Journal piece detaling $400 million in donations that allegedly fell through over donor anger regarding Summers' ouster, an e-mailer writes:
First of all, and most important, none of these gifts is described as a pledge. Summers was president for five years and apparently failed to bring any of these to the point of a firm commitment. People renege on pledges too, but very rarely. "Reneging" is not the right word for saying to someone sitting in your office that you hope to do something or want to do something, and then not doing it. Happens all the time. Of course ex post facto you can describe your supposed change of heart very grandiosely. To make a fair assessment of Summers's impact here you would have to know how much money in vaguely promised gifts fail to materialize in an ordinary year --- not $0, to be sure.Second, I wonder if Seward is not being used here by the machinery that has an interest in puffing Summers at Harvard's expense. Dirty business but of course perfectly consistent with Summers's way of doing things.Third, a president's impact on fundraising is the difference between what he raises that wouldn't have happened otherwise and what he fails to raise that would have happened with any kind of normal stewardship. There were people with a lot of money who thought Summers had to go because he was having a terrible impact on fundraising. Mrs. Loker happily gave Rudenstine and Knowles $70M (I think it was) for the Widener renovations, on top of what she had done a few years earlier for Loker Commons, but was offended by Summers, for example. It would take a lot better evidence than this article provides before one could fairly describe Summers as a great fundraiser --- remember, Rudenstine was raising money at a rate of $1M/day.Fourth, the specifics. Ellison you should just leave aside, who knows what is really going on there. Zuckerman is clearly happy to say anything to stir this pot as his own writings demonstrate. Smith is a difficult man, a very rich one to be sure, but one for whom I would want to see the word "pledge" in writing before I started counting the money. The surprising one in that group is Rockefeller, not a man given to pettiness. I wonder if Seward has that story in full -- even for a Rockefeller, giving the place $10M is not exactly a vocal statement that you are really really unhappy with Harvard. Finally, it is amusing to see so many people acknowledging that Summers was fired when the official story is that he resigned and the Corporation accepted his resignation with regret. If Summers resigned on his own initiative, shouldn't they be angry with Summers? Are these folks telling us that they don't believe the official version of current Harvard events --- any more than those who became fed up with the past five years' official distortions ever did?
