Larry Summers on Education Technology
Posted on May 31st, 2012 in Uncategorized | 37 Comments »
At a forum in Taiwan, Larry Summers praised the virtues of new education technology.
According to Focus Taiwan,
“Things change less by something old being changed than by something new coming along,” he said.
Students can post problems and get answers on the Internet, as well as carry out customized drilling and rote memorization via their tablet.
These are, of course, highly arguable propositions as learning methods go, though one imagines they were delivered in a Summersian tone of utter certitude.
More to the point…I wonder if Summers disclosed that he is employed by Minerva University, an online “university” which would seem to fit the bill of “something new coming along,” as opposed to, say, the place that pays Summers’ salary, Harvard, which would seem to be the “something old” in that equation.
Does it bother no one at Harvard that it is paying Larry Summers $400, 000 or so to work for a competitor?
37 Responses
5/31/2012 2:40 pm
Well, it bothers me, as it seems to be not only wrong, but in conflict with university policy:
[T]ime is not the only consideration determining the appropriateness of consulting and related outside activities. The more general concern is that such activities should not conflict with one’s paramount obligations to students, colleagues, and the University. Faculty members and other academic appointees are therefore expected to ensure that any outside professional activities in which they engage are consistent with the general policies of the University and those of their own Faculty. This can require attention not only to the overall time expended but also to the nature of specific activities and the individual’s role in them.
Full-time appointees should not engage in paid consulting for another educational institution or educational organization without the permission of their Dean and the Corporation.
That seems pretty clear, but of course, the Corporation may have approved it (and with Bob Rubin still on the board, that wouldn’t surprise me).
And then there is the university’s financial conflicts of interest policy, which goes to the disclosure question you asked:
To promote the transparency essential to societal trust in the University and its faculty, faculty members receiving financial support for their academic work, or having financial interests in or related to the subject matter of the work as defined in their School’s Implementation Plan, are expected to disclose such interests and sources of support in all publications, public reports, communications to the media, and formal presentations, written or oral, concerning that work and to comply with the disclosure requirements of their professional journals and societies.
5/31/2012 4:23 pm
Harry, do you really think that LHS went to the Corporation before cutting this deal? That seems wildly improbable to me. Assume he just goes ahead and does it—what’s the Corporation going to do, fire him…again?
5/31/2012 6:15 pm
No, I don’t think Summers asked first, or afterwards. What I was really imagining is that if he thought about it at all, he knew the Corporation would have his back, and and that it would therefore make no sense for the President to make an issue out of it even if she wanted to.
Meanwhile, one of my colleagues got a letter from Udacity that says, “We’re looking for outstanding computer science teachers to develop courses for us, and I’m hoping you might be interested in teaching a course with us. …” I showed him the policy quoted above (or rather, the previous paragraph, which says the same thing about teaching-the part I quoted is about consulting). What is he supposed to do? Follow the rules and his institutional loyalties, leave the money on the table, and borrow money to send his kids to college, while the Eliot University Professor enriches himself at Minerva and pontificates about the promise of online education?
5/31/2012 7:59 pm
I would borrow the money (it is interest-free) and sleep well. The rule makes sense.
I agree, Harry, this is pretty outrageous and I also assume Summers just did it without getting any authorization.
6/1/2024 6:41 am
Harry-The president has effectively removed herself from this debate by taking $300k a year from Staples. It’s not quite the same as what LHS is doing, but it’s still something that takes away from the time she gives to Harvard, has no relevance to her university role, and means that she’s taking a substantial amount of money from an outside source. Faust is too compromised to be a moral leader in this context.
6/1/2024 7:07 am
It all adds up to a big, important question. What does Harvard really think of all this? Its policies and its PR output are in plain conflict with the acts of its most famous and most senior members. Everyone in the community knows it, everyone is watching and wondering how to make sense of what they are seeing, and Harvard remains silent.
6/1/2024 8:27 am
An additional question, while we’re on the subject: If a professor obtains a patent for research done on university time/resources, she must share the royalties with the university. But if she writes a textbook using same time/resources, the university has zero claim on the royalties from copyright. Why should Harvard leave money on the table when professors are making real money writing books and hosting tv shows?
6/1/2024 10:46 am
Harry, as a famous Harvard alum once said, a fish rots from the head. DGF can’t lead on this issue; with the Staples board membership, she’s made herself part of the problem. Perhaps it is time for the faculty to push the question?
Though I suspect that that won’t happen either, as so many faculty members have financial incentives not to change anything about the current system…
6/1/2024 4:56 pm
I read somewhere the incredible news that Larry has joined the FIRE board of directors — Harvey Silverglate’s group, thorn of Harvard and all universities for years. It doesn’t seem possible! But let’s get him credit for a non-buckraking, genuinely progressive addition to this man’s “liberal” cred
6/1/2024 7:18 pm
LHS is clearly interested in playing a greater role in Silicon Valley. This would make him more valuable as a professor to his students.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/06/29/larry-summers-joins-andreessen-horowitz/
I don’t understand the spin Harry Lewis wants to give this story. Is his assumption that faculty are better faculty if they have no clue as to what is happening in industry?
6/1/2024 7:26 pm
It is certainly the case that Larry is developing quite a few ties to the Bay Area. A move anticipating the upcoming search for Stanford’s next President? That would surely make him the comeback kid: first President of Harvard, then President of Stanford… not quite the World Bank Presidency, but not bad either.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/22/larry-summers-to-sit-on-square-board_n_882520.html
6/1/2024 8:01 pm
7:18, you have the wrong story, understandably given how many boards Summers is joining. This is the one you want, and participation in THIS venture is clearly against Harvard regulations (watch the video and see how many minutes you can get through):
http://allthingsd.com/20120403/could-the-next-elite-university-be-online-and-venture-backed/
Dream on 7:26.
6/2/2024 7:34 am
Many regulations at Harvard were developed at a different time, for different purposes and when the mission of the University was understood much more narrowly than it is today. The world has changed, even if this is not evident to some of the contributors to this blog. If some of the current regulations place the President, Deans and other faculty in violation of the rules, and if there is no other evidence that these engagements are adversely impacting their duties to the University, shouldn’t the regulations just be changed?
After all Harvard is a center of research and teaching, not a church, and even churches -those with smart leaders that is- understand that rules need to be amended from time to time.
Just relax the conflict of interest rules a little.
Richard, really, calling Dean Minow a buckracker… please…
6/2/2024 9:14 am
CTR, I know she does great work-but the point is the number of outside activities Harvard faculty participate for which they are well paid…
6/2/2024 9:15 am
“Participate in,” sorry…
6/2/2024 9:18 am
Also, CTR, I think it’s a fair point to say, let’s reconsider some of these regulations. At the same time, how does working for an online “university” that openly states it aims to compete with Harvard, especially for international students, not present a conflict of interest when Harvard is, in theory, your primary employer? (Not to mention Harvard having its own Internet offerings which, presumably, it hopes one day to profit from.)
6/2/2024 9:26 am
Dear Change,
The problem is not with some old rule that needs to be adjusted to fit new circumstances. (The disclosure rules are in fact brand new.) The question is whether full time Harvard professors owe their primary loyalties to Harvard on academic matters. The rules articulate that expectation. This is from the prologue to the policy: “Along with status as a full-time Harvard academic appointee comes the expectation that one’s primary professional duties are to Harvard, and that outside professional activities will not conflict with obligations to one’s students, to colleagues, and to the University as a whole.”
So when I and my colleagues hang around at night helping students, rather than renting ourselves out to tutoring services for extra pay, yes, it’s because there is a rule about that, but it’s mainly because we think it would be wrong; Harvard and its students should be getting the benefit of our teaching, whenever we do it, even though none of is on a time clock.
In the same way, when Harvard asks me and my colleagues for advice and (in some cases) leadership on EdX, we don’t think we should say no, and in fact we think it’s exciting to be able to say yes, because it’s part of our privilege and obligation to make Harvard a better university.
It would be very hard to trace, as you suggest, the harm to Harvard if, for example, I tutored other students for pay at night rather than giving extra help to my own students. These conflict of interest and conflict of commitment policies are an attempt to make material a rather spiritual notion of what it means to be a professor, when the minimal responsibilities of the job (show up for class 3 times a week, turn in grades by May 15) are so ridiculously limited relative to what it takes to sustain the excellence of the University and to keep it moving forward.
6/2/2024 9:42 am
Well said, Harry. I would only add that the specific way in which the world has changed with respect to teaching and learning only brings the regulation into higher relief, makes it more relevant.
6/2/2024 11:24 am
Harry, what you suggests is a hypothesis, which could be tested, namely that those faculty with less outside engagements in fact are better teachers to their students, better researchers or better citizens of the university.
It might be a good idea for Harvard to collect empirical evidence on this issue, and use this knowledge to inform policy.
One could make the case that some of the faculty with few outside engagements, are also disengaged from their teaching, their research and their citizenship… dead wood in fact.
An equally plausible hypothesis, articulated first by Cornell West in his little diatribe with Larry Summers, is that faculty who take seriously their role as ‘public intellectuals’, going as far as spending time rapping, are in fact extraordinary teachers and scholars.
Clearly, there is no shortage of hypotheses as to how the many ways in which faculty chose to spend their time impact their contributions to Harvard… fortunately, this is an area where speculation and ideology can easily be replaced with knowledge of the facts.
6/2/2024 11:59 am
11:24,
But that is not what I am suggesting, as RT already pointed out in his response to 7:18. The issue is not “outside engagements,” which are allowable and even encouraged for exactly the reasons you suggest. (So I have no view about whether Martha Minow should or should not be on the MacArthur Board; and the issue of Faust on the Staples board is also something different, and has to do with her being president.)
The issue is a full time professor doing consulting or teaching for another educational enterprise, that is, doing exactly the kind of work they do for Harvard.
By the way, I do believe in repealing university rules that make no sense due to technological change. The rule against conflicting commitments isn’t one of them-unless you think that in the market-model university, the very concept of loyalties and commitments is passé. But then the notion of academic freedom has to go too-because the incomparable freedom professors enjoy is incompatible with doing as much academic work for other institutions as they wish and still calling themselves full-time Harvard professors.
6/2/2024 12:00 pm
Sorry, bad link. Here it is again.
6/2/2024 12:34 pm
I find this discussion both a bit confusing and disturbing, because people, most notably Richard, seem to be conflating a number of different issues which should not necessarily be conflated. (My colleague Harry Lewis has, I think, being doing his best to separate these issues clearly, so perhaps my comment will add to his.)
One issue is what responsibilities does a faculty member (or President) owe to Harvard by virtue of that appointment, and what specific implications are there regarding outside ventures and the corresponding remuneration for them. Richard, for example, has focused on the case of Drew Faust becoming part of the board of Staples. I am not clear on why this should be viewed as a problem, and still don’t feel that the reasoning behind Richard’s opinion has been articulated well.
If the issue is that it takes time from her job at Harvard, I answer, so what? I have three children and various hobbies (as well as outside consulting work); they also take time away from my work at Harvard, and that’s quite simply too bad. My working at Harvard does not give them control over 168 hours of my week, and the same holds for Drew Faust. If there are specific expectations that the President of Harvard owes all working time to Harvard, or otherwise for various reasons should not serve on outside ventures, then of course it is an issue, but I do not know of such rules, so I’m not clear why Richard (and possibly some others) find this problematic. If there are specific ways they think it would have a negative impact on job performance, I don’t feel I have heard them articulated.
I should point out for regular faculty there is the expectation that they may engage in outside activities, although there are limits on it, in terms of time. I view this as one of the perks of the job, and indeed, would be very more likely to take another job in industry were this not the case.
A separate issue regards the specific case of Larry Summers and his work for what appears to be another educational institution, something which, as Harry has noted, is specifically prohibited by Harvard rules. Here I follow Harry’s lead, in thinking this seems quite unseemly. It appears to be a violation of Harvard policies and should be examined accordingly. But it’s a very different issue to me than Drew Faust/Staples or Martha Minow/MacArthur Foundation, in that there’s a specific rule prohibiting this exact type of activity.
Finally, the meta-issues of the intention or understanding of these rules, and the “ethics” (although I feel it’s a loose use of the term) of Harvard faculty working for others, is coming into play. One can argue that the ability to do work outside of Harvard makes Harvard better. Certainly, in my field (computer science), there’s a conception that connections with industry are important, or a faculty member might start falling behind the fast-moving technology. And one could study whether outside work makes better or worse faculty members. Those are interesting questions, but their connection to the rules as they stand now is tenuous. Indeed, I’m not sure how one would frame a rule of the form, “You may do work outside of Harvard, as long as it’s clearly beneficial to Harvard.” Instead, the rules have been established primarily in terms of limitations on time, to prevent specific harms to Harvard. This seems like the right approach to me, though of course some may argue otherwise.
Does working with Staples make Drew a better President? I’m not clear that it’s any of my — or Harvard’s — business. (Again, one could make the case that the President’s office is an exceptional position with exceptional obligations; if so please articulate that argument clearly.) Similarly, one might argue that Larry Summers’ outside interest in online education might make him a better teacher. And I would say it doesn’t matter if it does. It’s against Harvard University policies about working for other educational institutions. If you think that policy is misguided, argue against it. (In this case, I think there are clearly good reasons for the policy as it stands.) Finally, let’s distinguish between policies and expectations as they currently exist, and how one might wish — in theory or in practice — to re-establish them given a blank slate. In particular, though, in this sort of thinking, I’d personally hope people would recognize that just because I am a Harvard faculty member, it does not follow that Harvard has monopoly rights to my time.
6/2/2024 2:41 pm
Well said Michael. You may know that there are recent attempts at Harvard to redefine the terms of ownership of the University of the intellectual property generated by professors. Some of the contributions to this discussion in fact seem to endorse this, suggesting that Harvard should share in the profits generated by textbooks authored by professors, ridiculous. These discussions date at least to the creation of icommons… where some suggested that anything posted on the platform automatically became the property of the President and Fellows… which would of course mean that the university ‘owns’ the IP in the design of any course. A strict interpretation of this rule would mean that Harvard faculty do not own their lectures or their courses, and cannot therefore sell those to any party, whether this is in direct competition with Harvard -as in Minerva- or not -as in Udacity. This notions is preposterous, a serious violation of the basic principles of intellectual freedom and professional autonomy that undergird the academy.
6/3/2024 3:04 pm
2:41 - How do you explain the fact that the University DOES accrue royalties from patents obtained by faculty? Is that any more a violation of their ‘intellectual freedom’? If Harvard is paying you for the time you spend writing a textbook, why should it not own a piece of your work?
6/3/2024 9:25 pm
Of course, there is no notion of “Harvard … paying you for the time you spend writing a textbook.” Professors are not on time clocks. That is what makes the previous discussion so problematical; if a professor comes in nights or weekends, or for that matter stays home commenting on first drafts of student papers, rather than doing some outside consulting gig, is Harvard paying the professor for that time? The only economically rational action for the professor is to spend less time advising and commenting on student papers and more time on the boards of distance ed companies and the like. But we don’t want professors behaving like rational actors in making those decisions about how to spend their time.
The issue of book royalties is actually more complicated than it looks. The line between a scholarly monograph, Pinker’s Blank Slate, and Mankiw’s Principles of Economics is not always obvious. Harvard’s policies have been revised recently to take into account the case in which the university makes a major investment in the production of a copyrighted work. One of the exceptions to the traditional understanding that authors own the books they write is as follows:
In circumstances where University involvement in the creation and development of copyrighted materials is more than incidental, including, but not limited to, use of resources such as funds, facilities, equipment or other University resources, in consideration of making such resources available, ownership and rights to shares of royalties or income or both shall be fairly and equitably apportioned as between the University and the Author(s) or may be varied by policy duly adopted by the University or individual Faculties.
This seems pretty reasonable to me. It would make no sense to try to balance the university budget on the back of professors who write deep into the night to produce works that are never going to produce a rational ROI in dollar terms; that would only incent them to write novels instead, or to hire themselves out to whoever would pay them for their time on a consulting basis.
The situation with patents is entirely different, because whenever federal funding is involved (which it is almost always is), the Bayh-Dole Act requires the University to seek patents and try to license the rights commercially. Harvard (and I imagine most universes) returns a share to the inventor. As a matter of public policy it is debatable whether this has really had the effect of maximizing the public good (there have been cases where a pharma company bought exclusive patent rights and then never commercialized the invention, just to prevent competition with a money-making drug it was already producing). But it is the law of the land.
6/4/2024 3:43 am
Larry on economics.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/7ad17ac2-ab42-11e1-b675-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1wmJVfBnO
6/4/2024 5:53 am
Larry on economics
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/7ad17ac2-ab42-11e1-b675-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1wmJVfBnO
6/4/2024 9:13 am
I think this whole ‘it’s my time and i’ll do what I want w/ it’ argument is way off base. True, when Harvard employs you, it does not ‘own’ your time; what it does own is the labor you do in your capacity as professor - whenever or however you do it. I.e. any computer science work done by a professor of computer science should be owned, in part, by the university. Do you think a guy who works for Google and invents a new app ‘on the side’ realistically thinks he’s going to keep Google’s hands off it?
Universities pay professors a lot of money to do research in their fields. Its hypocritical (and frankly preposterous) to say that they deserve that money AND reserve the right to do whatever they damn well please with the time it affords them. If you’re an economist and you writes an economics textbook, how can you possibly claim that your university is not more than ‘incidentally’ involved in its creation and dissemination? (You’d willingly advertise your university position in hawking it, wouldn’t you?) And if your consulting work builds off research you did at Harvard, Harvard should get a piece of that too.
The reason tenure is a waning institution is b/c it demands zero accountability of faculty. The university (and its funders and tuition-payers) pay and pay and get little in return.
And if profit-sharing would motivate professors to write more profitable novels and such, then they probably shouldn’t be professors in the first place (which is why tenure is such a losing proposition for universities - they should be able to fire a professor who hasn’t published any meaningful new work in her field in years). It’s a job, guys, not a sinecure. The more you abuse your privileges as faculty, the sooner they’ll be taken away by the parents, taxpayers, and legislators that pay you.
6/4/2024 10:25 am
Sorry you are having a bad day, 9:13. It might be helpful if you would identify yourself so we could better guess why you are hiding behind anonymity.
The freedoms that American professors have enjoyed have not served the country badly; higher education is, after all, one of the few industries where America is still the best, and there is plenty of evidence for the contributions to the economy of university innovation. I visited a college in Japan, on the other hand, where there were red, yellow, and green lights on a panel at the front entrance, showing whether the professors were out, in the building, or in their offices. There they know exactly how to account for professors’ time, and the universities contribute very little to the economy.
There are problems with the incentive structure, as I have written about elsewhere, but it’s not book royalties. Your solution, presumably, would steer professors away from writing books destined not to have a positive ROI, accounting for the value of the time it takes to write them; why should universities pay professors to write books that don’t make back the cost of writing them? That would certainly change what gets written.
Over and out. I have a couple of books I should get back to writing.
6/4/2024 10:49 am
9:13:
The University’s rules seem both standard and reasonable to me. So when you’re saying “Harry’s wrong”, I assume you’re attempting to argue that you don’t think it should be that way. It’s not clear why you think that from your statement, and as Harry points out, it’s particularly not clear that you’ve considered how changing the incentive structure would affect various outcomes.
Just to be clear, when you say:
“any computer science work done by a professor of computer science should be owned, in part, by the university.”
That is not the way it currently works (at Harvard or any other US university that I am aware of). It would be a dramatic change. Similarly for several other of your suggestions, such as Harvard taking a cut of consulting work done outside Harvard. I wouldn’t want to suggest that things could not work this way, but it would have various effects you might disapprove of. (If Harvard were to move in this direction, I’d expect a significant raise; or, similarly, new hires would expect higher starting salaries. Alternatively, I’d expect Harvard to hire administrators to handle associated paperwork, tax issues, etc.)
“Do you think a guy who works for Google and invents a new app ‘on the side’ realistically thinks he’s going to keep Google’s hands off it?”
You seem misinformed here, in that under various circumstances, I understand the answer to this question to clearly be “yes”.
“The university (and its funders and tuition-payers) pay and pay and get little in return.”
I would disagree, though of course you’re entitled to your opinion.
6/4/2024 11:20 am
I would say the answer lies somewhere in the middle of the previous two responses. On the one hand, I agree that universities are probably well-served by letting professors write what they want to write without asking for a cut of their book profits. (Though, Harry, I think professors would still write books that no one bought; they wouldn’t have to pay a tithe on profits that didn’t exist, and people still want to write about what interests them. They’d write different kinds of books if those books *had* to generate profits.)
But I would disagree with Michael Mitzenmacher and the next commentator who seem to think that the university would have any right to intellectual work generated under its auspices is an outrage. The feeling their comments generate is that they want Harvard to pay them so that they can make more money elsewhere; they want the profits of the private sector with the freedoms of the university. Nice work if you can get it. But as someone else points out, virtually everywhere in the private sector, if you come up with an idea while in someone’s employ, and it’s related to what you do for your job, your employer has a right to some of that intellectual property. Someone who works for Apple can’t just go off and create a new phone with new features concocted while at Apple.
Also to reply to Michael’s question about why I object to DGF’s serving on the board of Staples…
The answer is pretty simple: It’s bad for Staples and bad for Harvard.
Drew Faust, who was never worked in business a day in her life, is not qualified to serve on the board of a Fortune 500 company. Therefore, why would Staples ask her to do so? Presumably because it wants a weak director—which, as we all saw in 2008 etc., is a recipe for widespread disaster when executives make bad decisions. (Or maybe it just wants Harvard to buy all its office supplies from Staples.)
Why would Drew Faust want to serve on Staples board? She’s already said she’s too busy to do the thing that she loves, write history. The difference here is that it’s easy money-$300k for a few meetings every year. (Of course, directors are supposed to do more than that, but DGF is far too busy to be an engaged board member, and I doubt Staples wants that of her anyway.)
There may be times when it is useful for university presidents to forge alliances with business. (At least, that is the argument that people like Ruth Simmons make. ) But the point of the relationship should be about helping the university, not personal financial gain. The argument that DGF’s board membership on Staples helps Harvard is tenuous; DGF’s personal gain is not.
What’s the drawback? Well, for one thing, it takes time away from what is more than a full-time job for which she is very highly compensated. And two, DGF is now corrupted; she can no longer speak with credibility on an issue of great import to Harvard, the amount of time its professors spend on outside activities and the nature of those actives. Obviously, she has a self-interest in preserving the status quo-and, in fact, in not having that discussion at all. A shame. And, of course, if anything goes wrong at Staples-seems unlikely, but it’s always possible when you serve on a corporate board—she could be implicated (c.f. Ruth Simmons). And what’s bad for her is bad for Harvard.
6/4/2024 1:15 pm
Richard:
“But I would disagree with Michael Mitzenmacher and the next commentator who seem to think that the university would have any right to intellectual work generated under its auspices is an outrage.”
You seem to be ascribing a statement to me which is nothing like anything I’ve said. (Perhaps you just mean the other guy, and I won’t speak for him or her.) Please read what I said and come back. What I said is that the business model you’re suggesting — that the university would have rights to various things it doesn’t currently claim rights to — would be different from the world today, and would likely lead to non-trivial changes on both sides. With specific respect to consulting — and other activities — I’ve noted that Harvard does not have control of all my hours. Indeed, my concern is that you’re actually trying to give Harvard rights to any “intellectual work” done by me outside of its auspices, suggesting that by working for Harvard I’ve ceded any rights to intellectual work to them. Again, as I’ve pointed out, this is explicitly NOT what my agreement is with Harvard, so you’d be changing the system.
“The feeling their comments generate is that they want Harvard to pay them so that they can make more money elsewhere; they want the profits of the private sector with the freedoms of the university.”
Not at all. My agreement with Harvard is that I have a certain amount of time to work on outside activities. There are also agreements regarding things like publications of works and where there rights go, as Harry has pointed out. I’m pointing out that if you change these agreements, there are consequences (like professors like myself may go elsewhere).
I liken your statements to something like, “The legal system should be such that in civil trials, losers pay the winners’ legal fees.” One could argue that, but it’s a change from the current system, and it will have all sorts of implications that we probably can’t enumerate in advance. No outrage involved on my part.
[*Specific note: I realized after my previous note that one reason I believe Harvard doesn’t attempt to claim part of my “consulting hours” is because then they’d probably also correspondingly have significant legal liability. It’s not clear it’s in Harvard’s best interest to to be acting as my “agent” for outside Harvard activities.]
With regard to Drew Faust — again, I’m not at all clear about what specific aspect of “the President of Harvard’s role is exceptional” you’re basing your argument on. In particular, I’m trying to understand what arguments you’re making that wouldn’t apply to, for example, me.
“Drew Faust, who was never worked in business a day in her life, is not qualified to serve on the board of a Fortune 500 company. Therefore, why would Staples ask her to do so? Presumably because it wants a weak director—which, as we all saw in 2008 etc., is a recipe for widespread disaster when executives make bad decisions. (Or maybe it just wants Harvard to buy all its office supplies from Staples.)”
Here I believe you’re making several assumptions, all of them pretty insulting to people on both sides. It would be nice if you had data to back this up. Moreover, I’m not clear it’s especially germane to the arguments.
“There may be times when it is useful for university presidents to forge alliances with business. (At least, that is the argument that people like Ruth Simmons make. ) But the point of the relationship should be about helping the university, not personal financial gain. The argument that DGF’s board membership on Staples helps Harvard is tenuous; DGF’s personal gain is not. ”
Let’s go ahead and make the assumption that this business relationship is solely for financial gain on DFG’s part for the sake of argument. So then is your argument here that for University Presidents, they should not be able to take on outside corporate work under any circumstances? Because it’s a “more than full-time job for which she is very highly compensated”? That’s a fine and interesting argument of how the system should be set up. But really, whether that’s actually her agreement is up to her and her “employer”, isn’t it? Again, I’m not aware of her work agreement, but I can state that this would not be my understanding of my agreement with Harvard.
“And two, DGF is now corrupted; she can no longer speak with credibility on an issue of great import to Harvard, the amount of time its professors spend on outside activities and the nature of those actives. ”
Why? I think she’d have less credibility on the issue if she’d never spent time on outside activities, myself. Again, you make a large number of assumptions regarding motivations of actors that I think are unwarranted and beside the point. I should point out that there has been tremendous discussion the last few years at Harvard on outside activities — new Conflict of Interest policies in particular. I don’t see any signs that DFG is limiting discussion on this issue at all.
“And what’s bad for her is bad for Harvard.”
Same is true for me. I don’t want Harvard controlling the rest of my life just because they employ me. Do you want your employers controlling the rest of yours?
Obviously, employers do exert some control. It makes sense for employers to not let you work for competitors at the same time. It may well make sense for the President of Harvard not to take on outside work for various reasons. I’d like better reasons than “what’s bad for her is bad for Harvard”, though. And that she’s somehow “compromised” by taking on any type of outside work. Those aren’t compelling arguments to me.
6/4/2024 1:46 pm
Michael-Your points are all well made, and I’m sorry if I misstated any of your points. I also acknowledge that I’m making assumptions about DGF and Staples, some of which are unflattering.
But I do think that the president of Harvard is not just another employee, and should be held to the highest possible standards. To take on outside work suggests that being president of Harvard is a part-time job, one that somehow isn’t worthy of all of DGF’s professional attention, which is an insult to the university. Now, you might say that there’s no great time commitment here, but then you’re acknowledging that being a member of the board of a Fortune 500 company isn’t a big time commitment-which it should be. Either way, someone’s losing, whether it’s Harvard or Staples. And as I argued, you have potential conflicts of interest as a result, and potential bad press for the University should DGF’s service on a corporate board land her in hot water, as Ruth Simmons’ did. So, yes, my argument is that the president of Harvard should not be able to take on any outside corporate work under any circumstances. That should be a prerequisite of the job. (I might feel differently if it were pro bono work.) As to why that wouldn’t apply to you-well, because you’re not the president.
Like you, I don’t see any sign that DGF is limiting discussion on outside activities. But I don’t see any sign that she’s participating in it, either.
Perhaps what we are really articulating here is differing visions of a university president.
6/4/2024 1:46 pm
Sorry, that first sentence should have said “I’m sorry if I misstated any of your prior comments.”
6/4/2024 2:17 pm
God, it’s something when a CS professor starts sound like an Economics professor — a Harvard one especially.
6/4/2024 2:42 pm
@Anon 2:17
I find CS professors can present arguments as clearly (if not more clearly! department pride!) than economists — we’re used to trying to organize and present things in a clear and logically sound fashion.
Also, in CS these days we’re also understanding of issues like “incentives”. It turns out when building large-scale complex systems, where humans sometimes are part of the process, you can’t assume behaviors are programmed in. So you have to understand at least a bit about what encourages “good behaviors”.
Anyhow, I’ll assume you’re talking about me (instead of Harry) and you mean it as a compliment. Thanks!
6/4/2024 5:20 pm
Richard,
You say, Harry, I think professors would still write books that no one bought; they wouldn’t have to pay a tithe on profits that didn’t exist, and people still want to write about what interests them. They’d write different kinds of books if those books *had* to generate profits.
We are both imagining hypotheticals that are at the moment counterfactual. But we agree on the premise, that in some alternate universe the university really DOES think, as has been suggested it should, that it is paying professors for the time they spend writing books and therefore deserve a share of the royalties. My assumption would be that a university that acted on that premise would try to limit the downside as well as capitalize on the upside. That is, it would tend to devalue the contributions of professors whom they were paying, in part, to write books, and who did not produce a corresponding revenue stream. (Exactly what form the devaluation might take would get us into a third level of hypotheticals.)
Your assumption is that the university would take a proportional share of any revenue generated by Professor A, but would be indifferent if Professor B, who was being paid the same amount on the same understandings, was purely a cost to the university with no revenue for the writing he was doing. We are both posing hypotheticals on top of hypotheticals, but given the original premise, mine seems more plausible. It is, specifically, more in keeping with what now happens in the teaching realm; professors have to stop teaching courses almost nobody takes and start teaching courses with greater enrollments. Perfectly reasonable, and what we should expect if book-writing for profit were to be considered part of the same employment deal.