In John Donnelly’s well-reported article, provost Stephen Hyman proffers a number of excuses for Harvard’s five-month (minimum) delay in buying AIDS drugs for dying people in Africa.

These excuses include:

1) “[Summers] worried that the program was hastily crafted and could be a legal risk to the school.”

2) “…during the five-month period, Summers and [Hyman] were reviewing Harvard’s role in the project and trying to ensure that it was properly managed.”

3) “One major concern for Summers…was whether the U.S. government or patients could sue Harvard for any perceived future problems, Hyman said. In 2000, the U.S. government had sued Harard for alleged misuse of federal funds in a development grant in Russia. “That lawsuit sensitized him enormously for the need for Harvard to do this right,’ Hyman said.”

4) Hyman and Summers were so concerned about AIDS patients, they wanted to take the time to set the program up correctly. “‘Precisely because this is about life and death, it is absolutely critical that we get this right,’ Hyman said.”

5) Was this task appropriate for Harvard? “Hyman said Summers also raised questions about whether running an AIDS program in Africa was consistent with the university’s strengths of teaching students and conducting research.”

Let us consider these excuses, noting first that their multiplicity suggests a bureaucrat throwing explanations at the wall in the wan hope that one of them will stick.

1) “[Summers] worried that the program was hastily crafted and could be a legal risk to the school.”

Well, yes, the program was hastily crafted; it was called the “President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.” In other words, the White House’s express intention was that this money be spent quickly. So Summers overruled the White House.

2) “…during the five-month period, Summers and [Hyman] were reviewing Harvard’s role in the project and trying to ensure that it was properly managed.”

Let me repeat: the President’s Emergency Plan...

In any event, given the upheaval at Harvard recently, one has to ask whether a program under Larry Summers’ control would, in fact, be better-managed than one independent of his authority. The evidence would suggest that management is not Summers’ strong suit.

3) “One major concern for Summers…was whether the U.S. government or patients could sue Harvard for any perceived future problems,” Hyman said. In 2000, the U.S. government had sued Harard for alleged misuse of federal funds in a development grant in Russia. “That lawsuit sensitized him enormously for the need for Harvard to do this right,” Hyman said.

To those familiar with the events in question, the cynicism of this explanation is staggering. At the center of the government’s lawsuit is Harvard economist Andre Shleiffer, who is accused of profiting off Russian stock investments even as he was taking US money to give advice on the Russian economy. For years, Harvard has been arguing that it did nothing wrong in the Shleiffer fiasco, and has backed the economist to the hilt. Why? Well, as Boston Globe columnist David Warsh has persuasively suggested, perhaps because Shleiffer is one of Larry Summers’ best friends….

But setting aside that conflict of interest, let us consider the argument on its own terms. In one instance, Harvard is being sued over accusations that one of its economists insider-traded and that Harvard should have known about it.

In another scenario which is supposed to be analogous, an African AIDS patient might sue Harvard over mismanagement of a federal program. Think about that. Assume that such a patient lived long enough to file a lawsuit (because that’s what dying African AIDS patients do, file suit against a far-away university). What’s the realistic likelihood of such an event occurring?

Yup-better to just let the patient die.

4) Hyman and Summers were so concerned about AIDS patients, they wanted to take the time to set the program up correctly. “Precisely because this is about life and death, it is absolutely critical that we get this right,” Hyman said.

In other words, because this is a matter of life and death, let’s move with exruciating slowness that will, in fact, cost lives—possibly thousands of them.

5) Was this task appropriate for Harvard? “Hyman said Summers also raised questions about whether running an AIDS program in Africa was consistent with the university’s strengths of teaching students and conducting research.”

Whatever the answer to the question may be, the real point is that it contradicts things Summers has said a hundred, a thousand, times. He has consistently advocated a greater role for the university in the real world and urged that Harvard help solve the world’s health problems in a hands-on way. In this speech from just a few months ago, Summers contradicts the above explanation in half a dozen different ways. Here he talks about Harvard’s attempts to participate in tsunami relief. And here Summers talks about his view of the global role for Harvard’s School of Public Health.

Key quote: “But I say to you, if any institution in the world is well situated to maximize the contributions to solving that problem [of disease and economic inequity], it is the School of Public Health, with unmatched connections throughout the developing world, with an extraordinary scientific capacity, located here in the center of the best bio-medical research community that there has ever been in the history of the world, in the middle of a university whose major mission is to become more open to the rest of the world. It is a very exciting time to be associated with the Harvard School of Public Health because I am convinced that the School is going to accomplish great things in the next 10 years. And I am determined to do everything that I can to help [dean] Barry [Bloom] and his colleagues do those things and make progress against what I believe are the largest solvable problems that this planet faces.”

Sounds like a prescription to fight AIDS in Africa, doesn’t it?

The point is, none of the various excuses that Stephen Hyman offers are convincing. The truth may just be that Summers wanted to take control of a $100-million federal grant…no matter how long it took. Or how many people died in the meantime.