Harvard's Alumni: Larry Summers Rules
The Crimson interviews a number of fatcat Harvard alums, all of whom indicate that Larry Summers was the fatcat's meow.
Investment strategist Byron R. Wien ’54, who has served as a member of the executive committee of the COUR, says that he was concerned by the fact that so many of names on the [presidential search] list were career academics. “One of the great things about Summers was that his experience was broader than just university life,” Wien says.
One of the great things?
“Look, the issue with Summers is that Harvard was run from 1636 to 2000 by the faculty—and he was trying to wrest some of that away,” he adds.
So that's what the issue was.... Never mind that the faculty's loss of standing at the university was a trend in progress during the Bok presidency and continuing on through the Rudenstine years. The faculty had been accepting of its loss of authority under Bok and Rudenstine; for some reason, Summers compelled the faculty to rise up and take
back power.
(Of course, on the other hand, if you concede the premise of that remark, that the faculty were in charge for 350 years, well, they obviously weren't so bad at it, were they?)
“Frankly, I thought that the vision that Larry Summers had was super,” says Albert W. Merck ’43, whose family founded one of the 10 largest pharmaceutical firms in the world. “This one was going to take us into the 21st century.” “One of the best things that happened was that he put undergraduate teaching on the front burner,” Merck says. The president feuded with some faculty members—most publicly, African-American studies scholar Cornel R. West ’74, over what Summers saw as an insufficient emphasis on teaching students at the College.
Hmmm. Never mind that Cornel West taught one of Harvard's largest classes when Summers took him on. Never mind that Derek Bok prioritized teaching for 20 years. And never mind that
Mr. Merck's firm has recently suppressed news that one of its most lucrative drugs causes heart attacks.
What's going on here?
1) The Summers' agenda—which, as reported in the premier issue of 02138 magazine, was actually a four-page memo created by the Corporation—was, in fact, pretty obvious.
2) Rich alums feel both a natural empathy with former Treasury secretaries and a post-1960s distrust of academics
3) A significant number of Harvard alums from decades past aren't actually that smart
4) The alums are saying that they all support Summers' agenda, but are carefully avoiding any discussion of Summers' leadership style.
5) Larry Summers' attempts at historical revisionism—making the mailing to alumni of his Commencement speech part of his severance agreement, for example—has been strikingly effective, while the faculty have done nothing to publicize and record their version of the events of the past five years
6) Harvard alums have absolutely no idea what really goes on on campus, and their ignorance increases as they grower older, wealthier, and more influential in campus affairs
7) All of the above
