I think the real lesson is that much of what you have criticized Summers for actually pervades the whole university. That's not to get Summers off the hook (and, of course, he hired a lot of these people), but just to note that the Summers Culture may in fact just be the Harvard Culture.
 

An interesting point, which I hope you are wrong about but I certainly can't rule out....

Yes, the more I think about it, the more the case can be made.....
 

Here's a question: was Mitchell one of Summers' people that came with him from Washington? Also, isn't Mitchell the spokesman for just the Faculty of Arts and Sciences?
 

What scared rabbits they are!
 

Anybody remember the grand promise of this curricular review? To have more advising done by faculty and less by graduate students. Here we are, 3 years later, shifting a term's advising out of departments and on to the backs of more graduate students. What hypocrisy. What a disgrace!
(Both Rinere and Mitchell were appointed after Summers arrived. The spirit lives on ....)
 

Re anonymous 5:52, residential deans (formerly called senior tutors) are not graduate students, but members of the faculty. Their appointments are normally 50% Dean's office administrative, 50% departmental teaching.
 

Shellgirl, at 50% the residential deans can't add sophomore advising to their workload. As the Crimson ledes, "Houses will appoint resident tutors to advise first-semester sophomores under a revamped advising program announced by the College last month." The resident tutors are graduate students.
 

Anon 3:27 above. You are mistaken, Summers Culture is NOT Harvard Culture.

Summers deeply damaged the University Culture by encouraging many of the administrators he hired to behave in the ways described in this incident, in this way he did influence Harvard's Culture and that influence will be felt for some time. The challenge for President Faust will be to UNDO Summers legacy, by firmly establishing a new set of values more consistent with the norms of ANY University, and particularly with the norms that Harvard should aspire to live to.

It will take her a while to do this.
 

Richard,

What do you think about the new Magazine 'The Yard' and the motivations that led to creating it?
 

Hear, hear, RB. But I bet The Crimson is not holding its breath for that apology.
 

Also, for those who didn't click on the knots/tongue link RB used for Mitchell... do it. It made me laugh rather hard.
 

I used to work in the Dean's Office and I can vouch for the fact that the culture there is toxic. Perfectly nice, well-balanced new hires with good intentions (of whom Dean Rinere is one - she's really one of the more genuine people there) become frazzled, paranoid basket cases inside of a few months. I think it's partly a vestige of the Summers administration, but partly due to the fact that Harvard truly does place itself at the center of the universe.

Let's break this down:

(1) Someone on the Crimson staff conferred upon this report a ludicrous degree of importance, to the point that they covertly "obtained" (read: stole) it.

(2) Dean Rinere was doubtless advised by higher-ups that her office had some kind of "leak," and told of the grave danger the Dean's Office was in as a result.

(3) Mentally exhausted from working 80-hour weeks at a thankless job (it really is awful, take my word for it), she cracks under the pressure of conducting an interview with an undergraduate reporter for the SCHOOL NEWSPAPER.

(4) University Hall goes into lockdown, trying to figure out some way to repair the immeasurable damage this incident has caused. How can they silence this reporter without actually having to admit they did anything wrong??

I know it sounds absurd, but the way everyone acts around there you'd think they were negotiating peace treaties or disarming bombs, not running a college. The whole refusal to admit mistakes is definitely a Summers holdover though. What's wrong with saying women aren't good at science? ;)