He’s Gone!
Posted on September 22nd, 2010 in Uncategorized | 35 Comments »
Yesterday this blog asked if Larry Summers was leaving the White House.
Hours later, the White House announced his departure.
Coincidence?
I think not.
Here are the write-ups in the Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal. (Y’all read the hometown rag, right?)
Is this a failure for Summers, another premature exit from a high-profile job?
I’m not so sure.
In the “aye” column, you can’t exactly say the economy is back on track, and no one’s calling Summers a hero; not so many people are even calling him brilliant any more. Nor has he lived down his reputation as a jerk. With him gone, the dishing is sure to commence.
Also, it’s no secret that he wanted the Fed job, and not only did he not get it, it’s impossible to think that he ever will; the man simply has too many detractors.
In the “nay” column, remember where he came from just four years ago—the only Harvard president in modern times to be ousted, a hedge fund flunkie who (probably) wrote a mediocre Financial Times column. He’s now added a new chapter to the CV, and he can go back to Harvard and continue pulling down a $400,000 salary for doing, well, nothing.
(University professorships! On several occasions I’ve suggested to a Crimson reporter that they look at the productivity—and the expense—of Harvard’s university professors. It’d be a great story.)
Thanks to his Bob Rubin-mandated severance package, Summers is getting $400k a year from Harvard for life….
Meantime, Summers can always argue that, imperfect though the economy may be, it could be a lot worse. Given how he’s woven a very specific take on the financial crises of the 1990s into his life story, he should have no problem spinning this.
So you can argue this round or you can argue it flat. On balance, I think, Summers returns somewhat rehabilitated, and yet, also somewhat diminished in stature. The height of his rise did not equal the depth of his fall; to use an analogy he might appreciate, it’s like the diminishing bounce of a tennis ball.
What, then, does he do now?
As I wrote yesterday, it’s time for a memoir.
35 Responses
9/22/2010 8:27 am
Sorry for concentrating on a parenthetical comment, but I’m not sure the University Professor thing would be a great story. Of the people on the list (http://www.harvard.edu/about/university_professors.php), how many of them strike you as not pulling their weight? I doubt that looking into the careers of people like Helen Vendler and William Julius Wison is going to get you a story about people who don’t do anything. Maybe some of the University Professors are just coasting on past accomplishments, but maybe the Crimson hasn’t done a story because there isn’t one there.
9/22/2010 8:38 am
Maybe—but it’d be interesting to take a look. And I’m not slighting the status of those folks one bit, just wondering-in a Larry Summers-esque way, frankly—about whether they’re rewarding people for work that’s already been done as opposed to work that will be done.
9/22/2010 9:13 am
University Professor salaries are not $400K; they are significantly less. And I’d like to know how you can be sure Larry will be paid $400K each year “for life.”
9/22/2010 9:30 am
$400k is the max; I don’t know that LHS gets it, but given what I know of his severance package, it seems a reasonable bet that he’s on the higher end of the scale.
9/22/2010 9:32 am
The University Professors who come to mind (Gary King, Stephen Greenblatt, Skip Gates, Amartya Sen, George Whitesides, Dale Jorgenson, Larry Tribe) are ambitious and extremely busy people who continue to be very productive. They wouldn’t know how to slow down if they wanted to. There may be some who are coasting, but I have my doubts.
For all I know, a University Professor is paid more than an ordinary professor, but the primary distinction is that they can teach in any Harvard faculty and have greater freedom to work across departmental boundaries (since their department is no longer paying their salary).
But if Richard’s perception is widespread, maybe it would be a good idea for the Crimson to do that article and clear things up.
9/22/2010 9:45 am
400K is not the max. They are all around the same, and may be creeping up on 300K, but are not higher.
9/22/2010 11:02 am
There are University Professors and there are University Professors.
At least one donor who established a UP was allowed to put up only half of what was normally required and nonetheless get his name on it. Why? Ask Neil.
9/22/2010 1:24 pm
They can indeed teach in any department—but they don’t have to teach at all. How much they teach would certainly be one thing a Crimson reporter could examine.
9/22/2010 1:24 pm
Joe, sorry, that last was from me….
9/22/2010 8:25 pm
Summers made four changes in the practice and policy of awarding university professorships.
1. Tilt toward mid career rather than end of career. (never used before in that way to that degree).
2. Used to respond to outside offers (rarely used before)
3. Promise for future appointment when available (rarely used before, and drastically tied Faust’s hands-that’s why she hasn’t been able to appoint many of her own)
4. Not for administrative service.
The last is the most interesting. In the past, Presidents and major Deans were awarded University professorships: Adelstein in HMS; Rosovosky in FAS, and of course Bok. Summers objected and when Knowles and Clark were about to retire, created a new category for administrative service: distinguished professor (with same salary as U professor and reporting to President not Deans). But when Summers negotiated his own departure he ignored his own policy and principle, and insisted on a University Professorship.
9/22/2010 8:52 pm
From The Globe:
“Leaves of absence are granted to tenured professors for up to two years to serve in the government, she said. If faculty do not return to Harvard after two years, they could lose tenure. Professors could ask for a year’s extension, but Faust said one has never before been given.”
Technically correct. However, with a wink to acknowledge what will happen, professors have been able to leave for five years and then come back.
9/23/2010 6:28 am
Not sure that’s correct, Sam. Can you name one?
9/23/2010 7:45 am
Sen
9/23/2010 9:39 am
I believe Joe Nye took a government leave longer than two years, from Feb 1993 to Dec 1995, before becoming Dean of KSG. It was two years to start with, but I thought it was extended.
9/23/2010 11:32 am
Sam is wrong about Amartya Sen. Sen resigned his university professorship when he took up the position at Kings College Cambridge: he was not on a leave of absence. When he wanted to come back to Harvard, he had to be reappointed.
9/23/2010 1:48 pm
Warren,
Please read my reply closely. With all due respect to you, I do not believe I am wrong with my facts.
I did not say he took a leave of absence. Said he was able to leave.
Also said that “technically” (in reference to leaves of more than two years), President Faust was correct, however, “with a wink to acknowledge what will happen”…
That was in reference to the fact that the reappointment was agreed upon before he left. It is possible that he might not have left if that had not been agreed upon.
Warren, if you know something factually different with regard to the reappointment, please let us know and I will be happy to acknowledge my mistake.
9/23/2010 7:27 pm
I know nothing about either the Sen situation (much less the Summers situation). Nor have I talked to Warren about this. And this is all getting a bit esoteric. But Sam, you seem to be saying one of two things. Either (a) there was a legally binding agreement between Harvard and Sen that he would be rehired, no matter what he did in a scholarly or other way in the interim, which made him able to give up his tenure with confidence that he could have it back whenever he wanted; or (b) there was nothing in writing but there was an oral gentleman’s agreement between Sen on the one hand and a set of seven people on the other, the President and Fellows, none of whom might still be in place years later, that Sen would be given back his tenure regardless of whether he had written a word in the interim and regardless of whether he had made himself persona non grata with his academic colleagues, and so he cheerfully resigned his tenure confident that a possibly entirely new president and board would have orally been told the deal by the others on their way out the door. I don’t find either possibility very plausible. Which happened?
9/23/2010 8:57 pm
It was (b), not as you described it, but close enough.
When you have gentleman’s agreement there is always a risk, but that is the chance you take. Sorry you don’t find it very plausible.
If you have a good faith effort on both sides, and people who are honest in their dealings with one another, agreements very often work out in the real world.
If you didn’t find either (a) or (b) very plausible, what would you have suggested as to what had happened?
9/23/2010 9:43 pm
I imagine he was told that he would have to give up his tenure, but he might be reappointed later on depending how his qualifications looked at the time; no guarantees, take your chances. His dossier looked great based on what he had been doing in the interim and how his reputation had grown, so Harvard rehired him. Nothing sinister about that that I can see. Happens all the time with people who decline Harvard offers — some combination of the faculty, the deans, and the president say “Sorry you won’t be joining us, but if you ever get tired of the west coast, give us a call and we’ll see what’s possible then.” I know one member of the faculty who turned down Harvard twice, and when he called later on because of changed personal circumstances he got his third offer. In cases like these there doesn’t have to be a new ad hoc committee, but it’s not automatic — people reconnoiter to decide whether it’s still a good idea, whether there is room, etc. Sometimes it doesn’t work out. If this is what you mean by a “wink” we may not disagree at all, it just doesn’t seem to me at all suspect. In Sen’s case (again knowing nothing), I suppose he might have figured that Harvard needed him more than he needed Harvard, and was happy to take his chances and head off to Cambridge.
9/23/2010 10:13 pm
What surely made the AS move rather unusual was the position he was offered and held at Cambridge, not Master of Kings College (as Warren said), but rather of Trinity College, his undergraduate College (Masters must also have been Fellows).
This is also a thoroughly academic position, more so than any and all academic positions at Harvard, e.g., and utterly unlike what Summers or Kissinger moved on to when they left Harvard. Richard Bentley, the greatest textual critic my field has known, was Master from 1700-1742 — btw, he resisted the faculty’s efforts to eject him for about 30 of those years.
Given compulsory retirement in the UK (67-70 at the very oldest, though this may change), I’m sure when AS was offered the position at Trinity Harvard (rightly) made some sort of standing job offer to return 5-6 years after after he left Harvard.
9/23/2010 10:16 pm
in paragraph 2 read “any and all administrative positions”
9/24/2010 7:45 am
RT, what do you mean by “thoroughly academic position”? That he’s a figurehead (like the Queen), while a PM runs the staff, budget, etc?
9/24/2010 8:55 am
No, the opposite, 7:45. Academic as opposed to administrative, as my addendum makes clearer, I hope. In becoming Master of Trinity, AS, unlike Kissinger or Summers, moved from one academic (i.e. teaching/research) community (Harvard) to another (Cambridge, now ranked above Harvard, I see, for those who follow such things), so his moving back to Harvard was natural, and would have seemed so to Rudenstine and Knowles in 1998 when the deal went down (which it would have done because of the early UK retirement age).
9/24/2010 9:11 am
If I may summarize the implicit thread here:
Harvard has the only sensible policy here and there should not be any mystery about why things work the way they do. From a tenured faculty position you have the privilege of taking a leave of absence of up to two years for national service. More than that and you have to resign. (No matter how great you are, the university can’t hold an endowed slot open indefinitely waiting for you.) But resigning doesn’t mean you can never return, any more than turning down a Harvard offer means you can never get another one. That would be stupid and spiteful from the standpoint of the institution’s self-interest; why would having resigned once before disqualify you for a position at Harvard? It does, however, mean that you get judged again — is re-hiring you really a wise investment for the university? It depends on what you’ve been doing and what you’ve done to your own reputation. I remember a president muttering “smoldering volcano” as he turned down one of these people who hoped to get a second bite at tenure. Sen, on the other hand, must have been a no-brainer.
9/24/2010 9:36 am
Here is the explicit thread Harry, as RT and I said:
” so his moving back to Harvard was natural, and would have seemed so to Rudenstine and Knowles in 1998 when the deal went down”
The deal was done before he left and unless he screwed up badly, he was going to get his tenure back without any additional hassles (re a normal appointment).
Warren, perhaps you might have phrased it “I think Sam might be wrong…”
9/24/2010 6:00 pm
Maybe we are only quibbling about terminology now, but two more questions then, Sam. First, are you saying that there was no departmental vote on Sen’s return, because the “deal” had been cooked regardless? And to return to the way this thread started, did Summers leave with the same “deal”? If he did, then the talk about leaving the White House because of Harvard’s rules would be a smokescreen.
9/24/2010 6:13 pm
I have absolutely no idea if there were a departmental vote.
All I know is what I said (and it was summed up nicely by RT).
Have absolutely no idea whether Larry had the same deal. I would strongly doubt it for a number of reasons.
If I had to wager, he is coming back because Harvard said two years, no longer… and Larry is, for all his other past positions, foremost a brilliant academic and likes the university environment.
9/24/2010 6:48 pm
After I wrote the above piece, it occurred to me that your thought of whether there might have been a departmental vote could be be a moot point.
I’m sure you know the answer (I don’t), but isn’t a University Professor “not attached” to a particular department and if they are not, then no department would vote on them.
9/24/2010 8:04 pm
I apologize to Sam, for having misread his post of 9/22. In any case, I do not know the extent to which there was a firm undertaking to Sen, when he left, but as Harry points out, any such undertaking could be at best informal and non-binding. I do know that there was no Department vote (from my Department, at least) before his return, but as Sam says he returned to a University Professorship, which makes a Department vote irrelevant.
Now, RT’s and my colleague Gisela Striker also returned after an absence of several years, also at Cambridge University, and — although the two Departments did have to vote — there were no “usual hassles”, i.e., no collation of documents, no ad hoc committee. Jeremy just said “OK” (even though we didn’t have a vacant FTE at that point).
9/24/2010 8:58 pm
Quite so on Gisela, Warren, whose situation Jeremy labelled a (temporary) FTE “bulge”. And we did have to, and were very willing to, vote, so that is indeed where the University Professorship made the AS case a different matter in terms of the deal at the time of departure from Harvard.
9/25/2010 7:41 am
I believe the University did not fill the Lamont University Professorship while Sen was away, so he returned to the same chair from which he left. Five years is quite a long time for that chair to be left vacant unless there were some understanding about Sen’s return.
By contrast, the Fletcher University Professorship was vacant for a couple of years until Cornel West indicated that he would not return. It was then quickly filled - perhaps so that West could not change his mind yet again.
9/25/2010 4:57 pm
Mother of God…do you people ever speak to each other in person or just here?
And do you always quibble over every word?
9/25/2010 9:06 pm
I did observe that the thread was getting a bit esoteric. On the other hand, yes, words matter.
9/26/2010 10:19 am
Harry, I would agree that words matter. But, that said, there appears to be an “arms race” or “gotcha” tone/attitude going on here with words…is that really a productive approach? To the uninitiated, it just looks like a bunch of third graders in the school yard - it is a little too competitive with no real goal.
9/26/2010 10:59 am
The goal was clarifying whether the rule about giving up tenure if you stay away from Harvard for more than two years is really a rule or not, and that was was very much on-topic for this post.