Well, maybe not for Harvard president Lawrence Summers. While he was off in Utah skiing—more on that later—the big three of relevant newspapers discovered that the Corporation is alive! Yes! Alive, I say!

Daniel Golden in the Wall Street Journal was the first to report that members of the Corporation have been engaging professors in conversation about possible scenarios involving a Summers resignation.

(Golden is an aggressive reporter with a nose for news; it is not good news for Larry Summers that he is now working this story.)

On the 19th, Marcella Bombardieri at the Globe weighed in with a piece titled “Harvard board said to weigh Summers’s fate.”

(Can we please have all newspaper style desks agree to ban the “s’s” formulation? It’s archaic and ugly—just try to pronounce it. “Summers’ fate” is just fine.)

Over at the Times, Alan Finder produces the weakest story of the bunch, “Board Said to Be Seeking Faculty Views on Harvard President.” His piece appears to be dependent upon a single anonymous source.

Online, insidehighered.com weighs in with a round-up of its own.

A few thoughts on what we can glean from these collected pieces.

The active board members are Nan Keohane and Robert Reischauer; treasurer James Rothenberg also gets a mention. Jamie Houghton is reportedly engaged, but not as visibly. Robert Rubin is nowhere to be seen. Patricia King is not yet a member of the Corporation.

Isn’t it interesting that the Corporation members who seem most concerned about the future of Harvard are the ones who happen to be academics, rather than businessmen?

So…what does it mean that they are talking with professors? It could mean very little; if the Corporation were not so insanely secretive, one would think, “Well, of course they’re talking with the faculty? How could they not?” But given the traditional aloofness of the Corporation, the mere fact that they are talking with the faculty is news.

If the leaks were coming from around the Corporation, I’d say that the Corporation itself was trying to ramp up the pressure on Summers. But they don’t seem to be.

There’s another way in which these conversations seem important; they didn’t take place a year ago. At least, not in the same manner, a real listening process. Suggesting that the Corporation is taking this most recent uproar more seriously than it did last year’s, and realizes that it can’t just sit back and do nothing—again.

A couple of thoughts on Bob Rubin.

His silence—his absence—are provocative. Is he such a stalward ally of Summers’ that he is derelect in his responsiblities to Harvard? That’s a possibility.

It’s also possible that any conversations by Rubin, who was essential to Summers’ becoming president, would be instantly leaked and parsed for signs of what Summers’ reportedly most loyal supporter is really thinking. Even the mere existence of such conversations would be taken as an ominous sign for Summers.

I can’t help but thinking that Rubin will have to play an important part in this before it’s all over.

Two guesses:

1) When the Corporation sends an emissary to Summers to say, “Larry, it’s time to go,” it will be Bob Rubin.

2) It will also be Bob Rubin who will set up Larry Summers with a lucrative Wall Street job, announced a month or so after his resignation, that will ease the sting for Summers. The Harvard president is, by most standards, a rich man…but compared to what he could be making in Manhattan, he’s a pauper. Spinning his departure as a defeat by the radical left-wing nuts of academia, Summers will become a hero on the Street, where his arrogance will once again be mistaken for brilliance and his salary will jump by a factor of 25 to 50.

The question is, what happens to Lisa New? When Summers moves to New York, will she resign her Harvard tenure? Thus becoming yet another person closely associated with Summers whose professional career has suffered as a result? Or can Bob Rubin finagle her a position at Columbia—doubtful, as Columbia president Lee Bollinger has no love for Summers, or Harvard, which should have chosen him in the first place—or NYU?