At Harvard, Shleifer Simmers
The Crimson discloses that
a secret report on
the dealings of controversial professor
Andrei Shleifer has been sent to new ( and old) FAS dean Jeremy Knowles.
Knowles is certainly qualified to handle such a matter, but the report puts him in a tricky position. As Javier Hernandez writes....
Knowles was dean of the Faculty in 2001 when Lawrence H. Summers—a close friend of Shleifer[*]—was named president. In a 2002 deposition, Summers acknowledged that earlier in his presidency, he had told Knowles that he was “concerned to make sure that Professor Shleifer remained at Harvard.” Knowles elevated Shleifer to the Jones professorship in 2002.
My impression of Knowles is that he's a fair-minded man, and quite savvy about university politics. Certainly he had/has a far greater mastery of the deanship than did Bill Kirby.
But given the fact that he was pressured by Larry Summers to promote Shleifer, perhaps Knowles should recuse himself? It's hard not to see how his earlier role doesn't complicate the situation. If he finds against Shleifer in some way, it's a suggestion that his earlier decision was compromised by Summers (which it surely was). If he rules positively for Shleifer, then the perspective, whether fair or not, could be that he's trying to validate his earlier decision to promote Shleifer.
As I say, a tricky position. (And I'm sure there are nuances I'm not aware of.) If I were Knowles, I'd boot it up to Derek Bok.
By the way, the three-member committee that drafted the report against Shleifer is secret, and the names of the members are not being disclosed.
Why and why not?
These are harder questions to answer than one might first think. Secrecy can be rationalized...but freedom of information is better.
(And does anyone know who was on this committee? Please post...)
The committee report should be made public as well. After all, this is a university report about the actions of a professor playing a major role in the attempted democratization of Russia. Harvard should not sweep this under the rug. The actions of this professor had impacts far beyond the Cambridge campus, and are a matter of public importance. The university has a moral obligation to disclose what it knows about what happened with Shleifer.
It is hard to see how university officials can make any decision regarding Shleifer, and have it be considered legitimate, without disclosing the contents of this secret report.....
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Kudos to Hernandez and the Crimson, by the way, for not making the ubiquitous and ghastly grammatical mistake, the redundant possessive, and writing "
a close friend of Summers's".....
