Excellent article Richard. It's well researched and written. It is also prudent in not making predictions about the future, though what you say gives enough food for thought about the coming years. This notion in particular signals trouble ahead:

"but privately, Summers was seething. “Larry is pissed,” says a friend of Summers. “If you put yourself in his shoes, this wasn’t going to be an easy day for him, whomever they chose. But he sees this as the ultimate repudiation—they picked his complete and total opposite.”

If you are right about this, and if there was hesitation in the Corporation in the appointment, and if indeed the faculty are divided in their approval of this choice, then Faust begins on very shaky ground and with some real enemies within Harvard. How long will they wait until they try to trip her over? Will she know how to deal with them?

But maybe it does not matter for Harvard. Even is Faust ends up as embattled as Summers, she would still have given the Corporation time and it sounds as if they had run out of choices this time around.

Is there a Summers' camp organizing? Does it have ties to the corporation and alumni? Do they want to see Faust fail? What side is Hyman on?
 

There's an online poll in 02138 asking whether Faust was the right choice for the Presidency? So far the answers are 50% yes and 48% no.

Do you know whether this reflects how students, faculty and donors feel about this appointment?

If if does this is a difficult way to start a presidency.
 

I guess I am surprised, to use your word Richard, at how "clumy" Harvard is when it comes to comminuicating. Perhaps they always have been.

Could it be that the likes of blogs like this and other forms of immediate information from unknown sources have allowed the rest of us to see behind the green curtain?

I wonder if the decision making by the highest levels has always been as poor as it seems now. And, if so, was Harvard's past authority really an illusion built on secrecy and not on accomplishment?

By the way, it sounds as if science will have a big play in the next set of policy directives coming from Mass Hall. Since Summers poisoned the well with the likes of HMS, HSPH, FAS and the hospitals how will they ever get Allston back on track? Moreover, the University cannot even get an art museum sited in Allston-this does not look good for the management of that project.
 

If I had more time, I think I'd write a bit about the HNO's definition of "news," which is shockingly old-fashioned. No magazines, no TV (which you could link to on the web), no blogs...

Could you imagine a West Coast university—Stanford, for example—being so troglodytic about the media?
 

You mention in your article that the Corporation was shocked that so many candidates decided that they'd rather stay elsewhere.

Would they be shocked to know that, for many students at the undergraduate and graduate level, Harvard is no longer the place of choice? Do they even know what the trends in the number of applicants are and how they compare with trends at other schools? What would happen to Harvard's reputation if these trends became public?

Perhaps some of the intellects governing Harvard are not so powerful after all.
 

Your piece Richard is quite informative about your sources. Apparently Hyman communicates with you in amicable terms, are you more than acquaintances? is he a regular reader of your blog? does he contribute? Interesting that he was so open with the Corporation about his frustrations with Larry. At what point in the Presidency of the person who appointed him did he become frustrated and did he ever share his frustrations directly with Larry? When did he start sharing these frustrations with others? Should we expect that he will in turn become frustrated with Faust? if so, will he share his frustrations directly with her?

"In an e-mailed statement praising Faust, Hyman told me, “I was so out of the loop that I was informed of the results by a very polite newspaper reporter.” (At Faust’s request, Hyman has since agreed to stay on as provost.)"
 

Richard and 9:19

I think you answered my question and made the point-these people are out of touch with the human race and I dont think it is the Summers Camp vs. the who ever camp-it is the whole place.

The feuding internally comes with any big place but they have put themselves out there in a very big way on science. I dont think there is a person at that university capable of getting that agenda accomplished.

Faust will really have to clean house at all levels if they are to re-establish the university as a player in science, image and attractiveness to academics and students.

If Tony Blair could invent the "Cool Britania" campaign and reinvent the image od England, I do hope that Faust can do something similar for the place-it needs a good shake.
 

it is more than the sciences that are in trouble at Harvard... the education school is in turmoil... hundreds of students have signed letters conveying that they are 'worried' about the future of that school...
 

you think the education school is in turmoil? Have you stepped in Gund Hall lately?
 

For a real roman circus check out the finances and management of the Kennedy School.
 

WOW!

Time to call in the crisis management team.

Does the UN have an peace keepers handy or have they all been sent to Irag, and Darfur and the Sudan?
 

Richard—

Three questions about your interesting and informative article.

(1) You say that the Corporation wanted “a president who would advance Summers’ agenda.” You do not say exactly what this agenda was, but earlier you mention undergraduate curricular reform, a capital campaign, science planning, and the development of a new campus in Allston, which I assume would be included on this agenda, along, perhaps, with achieving better integration between the various faculties. Larry Summers pressed for these things, and rightly so. But they are things that any reasonable president would have pressed for. Referring to them in this context as “Summers’ agenda” is naturally read to suggest that he was unusual in having these goals, that they were controversial, and that this controversy was partly responsible for his downfall. These suggestions strike me as false.
(2) Why is it surprising that successful administrators at major universities, such as Amy Gutmann, John Etchemendy, and Shirley Tilghman, would have strong and admirable reasons not to want to leave their jobs? If members of the Corporation had suggested that these people should have been willing to forget loyalty to their own universities and jump when Harvard called, you would have cited this as showing that the Corporation was living in the past and had a foolishly exaggerated sense of Harvard’s grandeur. So why do you suggest that the unwillingness of these people to make themselves available is somehow embarrassing for Harvard?
(3) It seems to me quite reasonable for Dr. Cech to prefer giving away money rather than raising it, and to prefer not to give up his laboratory in order to take on full time administrative work. It also seems reasonable for the Search Committee to insist that if Cech were to become president of Harvard he would have to put major effort into fund raising and not be running a laboratory in Colorado. The fact that they would pass over him for this reason thus implies no negative judgment about his character, his brilliance, or his abilities as an administrator. Given that it does not, and assuming that, as you say, this is indeed what happened, what does it say about Cech that he rushed out to say that he had withdrawn as a candidate, just to prevent people from thinking that he had been passed over?
 

Tim,

Good questions all. Let me try to respond (briefly, sorry, a little under the gun here). But really, I think these questions are starting points for conversation.

1) I referred to it as Summers' agenda because it *was* his agenda as president, and hadn't particularly been the agenda during the Rudenstine years.

2) I *do* suggest that members of the Corporation believed that these candidates would come when Harvard called.

3) I think it's best if you draw your own conclusions about that.

Thanks for your post, hope that helps.
 

Richard, I agree with Tim Scanlon here. Not only were these goasl those that any reasonable president would have had at that time, but some of the initiatives that are often said to have been "Summers's" agenda were already well underway by the time he took up the presidency (Allston is a case in point).
As for those candidates for the presidency who declared their loyalty to their current institutions, they had been put in a bind by whoever it was who leaked names to the press. They really couldn't do anything other than what they did. Whatever were the leakers thinking? It'struly hard to understand why they released this information.
 

Judith,

On the first point, you're right, of course—I'm the one who first published the fact that the Corporation wrote up a memo which it gave to Summers essentially dictating that agenda. But it is associated with him, and he did push it, so he took some ownership of it....

As to your second point, I wasn't involved in those stories, so I couldn't say. Maybe they didn't think much of the names; maybe they wanted to float trial balloons. I don't know.... You'd have to ask the Crimson folks, who broke those stories.