Harvard Rules (24 page)

The newcomers did not go over well. By and large, they knew little about Harvard, and their sometimes clumsy attempts to get up to speed rankled. To avoid just that learning curve, Harvard presidents customarily hired Harvard graduates. Alumni not only possessed helpful institutional memory, but they were also devoted to their alma mater; their loyalty to Harvard was the foundation of their work for its president. By hiring Washington politicos, Summers sent the message that he wanted an inner circle that was loyal, first and foremost, to him.

For people who had worked at Harvard for years, often decades, this was not a good omen. Yes, it was true that the Corporation wanted Summers to shake things up. And, yes, it was also true that Summers was the first Harvard president who might plausibly consider the job a demotion. But the citizens of Harvard did not see things that way. For them, there could be no better job in the world than to be president of Harvard. Harvard's traditions, its way of doing business, set a standard for others and kept the university from being swept up in the great onrush of American materialism. They did not appreciate staffers who considered their boss more important than the institution that employed him. “He travels with an
entourage,
” said one longtime member of the community. “No Harvard president before Larry ever said, ‘I'll talk to my people about that,'” noted another. No Harvard president had ever had “my people” before—there were only Harvard people. And as Skip Gates had said to Summers, such language sounded like political flimflam—dilatory and disingenuous. It irritated Harvardians that Summers could bring Washington-style politicking to their campus and still enjoy a reputation as a straight shooter. Most of the time when he talked to the
Crimson,
it was off the record or not for attribution—a university president who didn't want to be quoted by his own campus newspaper! But when the
New York Times
called, Summers was certain to pick up the phone.

Summers not only hired cultural strangers, he used them in ways more reminiscent of Washington than Cambridge. Cell phones glued to their ears, his staffers followed Summers around campus, scribbling notes, snapping photos of him, and fetching him Diet Coke, pizza, and chicken wings. If Summers was giving a lecture or attending a meeting, an aide preceded him to the site, scoping out the room like a White House advance team. When Summers spoke at Memorial Church, a staffer arrived early to ensure that the president would find a glass of water waiting for him. Summers, however, was always late. Certainly he was busy, but his tardiness wasn't always accidental. He never wanted to be seen waiting for a room to fill up; it made a person look like he had spare time. Instead, he'd stride into a crowded room, giving a thumbs-up to a face he recognized in the crowd, reaching into a row of seats to shake someone's hand. Waiting drove him crazy. When Summers traveled internationally, according to one source familiar with his travel arrangements, he'd have a staff member call up the customs officials at Logan Airport so that Larry Summers would not have to wait in line with the hoi polloi.

Sometimes Summers relied on his staff in ways that struck the community as just bizarre. At one event later in his presidency, Summers met the freshmen who lived in Mass Hall. Before the gathering began, aide Colleen Richards Powell informed the students that she didn't want the conversation to be awkward, and so she asked them to suggest questions for Summers to ask them. They decided that Summers should ask, “What surprised you about Harvard?”

When the president arrived, he seemed bored and distracted until Powell handed him a slip of paper. Summers read it, cleared his throat and said, “So, tell me, what surprised you about Harvard?” Sitting in a circle, the students, one by one, answered the question, all the while having to pretend that they weren't expecting it.

In Washington, such gestures signal a person's importance and are so commonplace among high-level politicians that the lack of them is more notable than their presence. In Cambridge, they felt like the hallmarks of a hostile takeover. Summers' use of political tactics and political people suggested that he distrusted the community. That, in turn, bred suspicion and dislike among Harvardians used to a less “imperial” leadership style, as it was often described. One high-level administrator quickly dubbed Michael O'Mary “Summers' yes-boy,” because, although he played the role, he wasn't old enough to be a yes-man.

The insult was a small complaint suggestive of a larger issue: a widespread feeling that Summers was not hiring aides strong and independent enough to tell him when they thought he was making a mistake. Some observers saw a gender-based pattern. As had been the case at Treasury, Summers' closest staff members were female. He seemed to feel most relaxed in the presence of women. “Larry surrounds himself with these women who see the vulnerable side of him and think they can change him,” explained one White House aide who worked closely with Summers. Conversely, whether at MIT, Harvard, or in Washington, virtually all of the colleagues whom Summers felt intellectually challenged by were men.

Yet Summers didn't get many positive reviews for spending time with one woman who probably did challenge him. As early as September 2001, the campus was buzzing with the rumor that Summers was dating conservative writer and radio host Laura Ingraham, a furiously anti-Clinton partisan about a decade younger than Summers. The relationship had apparently begun before Summers left Washington. In July, the pair had lunch at the Palm steakhouse, a hangout for D.C. celebrities. “What shorthand phrase will future historians use to describe the Clinton administration?” Ingraham joked. Summers didn't know. “Sex between the Bushes.” Then, in early September, the two were spotted jogging along the banks of the Charles together, and the
Washington Post
reported that Ingraham had helped Summers lose twenty pounds.

It was, admittedly, a difficult situation for Summers; Harvard hadn't had an unmarried president since John Thorton Kirkland, who served from 1810 to 1828. There was no modern precedent for a bachelor president, no existing social code to help Summers adjust to the situation. But it is safe to say that even if there had been, Laura Ingraham wouldn't have been Harvard's choice for an appropriate presidential girlfriend. She is a graduate of Dartmouth, where she had been an editor of the arch-conservative
Dartmouth Review.
After serving as a speechwriter in the Reagan administration, she attended the University of Virginia Law School, after which she clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. For an article on young conservatives, she had posed on the cover of the
New York Times Magazine
wearing a leopard-print miniskirt. And she'd authored a book trashing Hillary Clinton.

Part of the campus' skeptical reaction was political. Harvard liberals didn't like the idea of their president dating a right-wing bomb-thrower, even if she was a bombshell. Many found it odd that one of the highest-ranking members of the Clinton administration would date one of its most vociferous critics. But perhaps the larger objection was cultural. Laura Ingraham is a very modern figure, a Washington player who straddles the worlds of politics and media. She was a dramatic change from Sissela Bok, a scholar, or Neil Rudenstine's wife, Angelica, a patron of the arts. And, for that matter, she was a drastic departure from Summers' ex-wife, Victoria Perry. To many Harvardians, she was another sign of how Summers was bringing Washington style to a campus that had always believed Washington needed it more than it needed Washington. After all, Harvard predated Washington by one hundred and sixty years.

Summers' relationship with Laura Ingraham didn't last long, so it was only a blip on the campus radar screen. A much more enduring issue was something the campus found hard to discuss. Harvard had a new president with—there was no other way to put it—bad manners. When students came to see him, Summers propped his feet up on his coffee table or desk, sometimes with his shoes off, regardless of the condition of his socks. He often appeared in public with a toothpick dangling from a corner of his mouth. If someone said something he found uninteresting or foolish, he'd conspicuously roll his eyes. He seemed incapable of looking an interlocutor in the eye. “I went to shake his hand, and he never made eye contact,” said undergraduate Johanna Paretzky, who met Summers after she sang at a concert for his inaugural. Paretzky demonstrated by turning her head so that she was looking over her right shoulder. “It was really dramatic, like he was looking for someone else.” Dozens of students and faculty tell essentially the same story.

Other times Summers would simply stare into space when you were talking to him. “Larry's always looking away,” said one junior professor who has met him on several occasions. “At first you think he's scanning the room for someone more important; but no, he's just looking away.” Summers frequently mangled the names of people he was greeting or introducing, with ethnic-sounding names giving him particular trouble. For an entire year at faculty meetings, Summers mispronounced the name of Michael Shinagel (Shi-
nay
-gull), the dean of the extension school, calling him Shin-
ah
-gull. His behavior at faculty meetings troubled the faculty in other ways. One of the most venerable traditions at these highly formal gatherings is something called the “memorial minutes,” in which professors read brief remembrances of colleagues who have passed away. The readings are short, but they matter; they're a sign of respect for the Harvard past, and faculty members take them very seriously. But during the readings, Summers closed his eyes and drummed his fingers. He looked bored, impatient, and disrespectful, as if honoring the dead were keeping him from more important tasks.

Summers had another tic that those conversing with him found unsettling. While he was thinking or listening, he'd trace circles around his mouth with his right forefinger—on and on, apparently compulsively. He gave no sign of being aware of the habit. “He's like a free-throw shooter in the NBA,” said 2003 graduate Krishnan Subrahmanian. “When he talks, he has to do these little rituals.” It made those conversing with him feel as if Summers wanted to be somewhere else—or wanted them to be.

The president's social deficiencies even extended to alumni he was soliciting for money. On several occasions when Summers was talking with prospects for donations, he simply wandered away in mid-conversation—in mid-
sentence
—as if he couldn't muster the energy to feign interest. To an observer, it looked like Summers had a sort of mental radio. When he'd heard enough from one station, he simply twisted the dial to another. The fundraisers tried to work around the problem by, for example, scheduling him to play tennis against prominent alumni. Summers grew conspicuously more interested in his environment whenever an element of competition was introduced.

But it wasn't just individual interactions that were a problem; Summers wasn't always good with crowds, either. On a trip to London early in his tenure, he arrived late and tired to an alumni banquet, and was not pleased when he wasn't able to eat before his speech. According to several people who were present or subsequently heard about the incident, Summers cracked a joke to the effect that a nation that couldn't serve a salad on time was doomed to second-tier status. That started the trans-Atlantic phone lines humming.

Food was a recurring problem. Summers was a prodigious and sloppy eater. The first time he visited the editorial board of the
Harvard Crimson,
in the fall of 2001, he dispatched an aide to Pinocchio's, a beloved campus pizza place. When the aide returned, Summers talked to the editors as he wolfed down bites of pizza, much of which found its way onto his shirt. The students watched, transfixed. On another occasion Summers went out to dinner with several graduate students. After one excused himself to use the restroom, Summers started choking on a piece of meat. The student returned from the restroom to find another diner standing with his arms around the president, preparing to give him the Heimlich maneuver. Summers coughed up the meat before the emergency measure was necessary. And then there was the general problem of eating and talking at the same time, which sometimes resulted in Summers spraying saliva on his audience.

Tellingly, the beat reporters covering the Treasury Department had never reported on such social peccadilloes, though many were aware of them. “He had the worst table manners of any cabinet head ever,” claimed one
Washington Post
reporter who socialized with Summers on several occasions. But readers of the paper never heard about that. Any beat reporter who made note of it would quickly find his access at Treasury much diminished.

At Harvard, however, the student press had no such compunctions. This was not because the
Crimson
is a tabloid rag. On the contrary—it is so concerned with its professionalism, so aware of its hundred-fifty-year history, that it often comes across as deferential to the Harvard administration. (It's a far cry from the
Crimson
of 1969, which editorialized in support of a North Vietnamese victory.) Yet Summers' manners were so widely remarked upon that student reporters were really just transcribing an omnipresent campus conversation. Putting his feet on the table, staring into space, rolling his eyes—all these small gestures seemed to symbolize a larger lack of respect that Harvard's new president had for the university.

The
Crimson
's columnists repeatedly noted how Summers' lack of social graces impeded his interaction with students and faculty. Columnist Vasugi V. Ganeshananthan wrote that Summers' “best efforts to demonstrate his interest in us fall miserably short…because they literally look terrible. (The man even fidgeted at his own installation, and I'd guess he was pretty interested in that.)…It's at the root of every major problem he's had this year.”