Harvard Rules (45 page)

Especially with the curricular review foremost on Summers' agenda. The review was to begin in earnest during his third year, and in his commencement speech he wanted to lay out what he expected from it. For two reasons: one, because he had strong opinions about how the Harvard College curriculum needed to be reformed; and two, because a fund-raising drive with the review as its centerpiece was just beginning. Donors would be urged to contribute toward new programs, more professors, new classrooms, and so on. Summers wanted to use commencement as a sort of fund-raising kickoff.

For half an hour or so, on this damp and chilly June day, Summers spoke about what he expected from the new curriculum. He wanted students to be as satisfied with their academic experience as with their “outside activities.” Students should be able to compose a literate essay; interpret a great text; connect history to the present; and “all of our students should know—they should genuinely understand at some basic level—how unraveling the mysteries of the genome is transforming the nature of science, and how empirical methods can sharpen our analysis of complex problems facing the world.”

The audience seemed to like Summers' speech; indeed, the outside community always liked it when the Harvard president spoke of making a Harvard education
even better.
But FAS administrators were uneasy. Ostensibly, the curricular review was Bill Kirby's domain. In front of tens of thousands of people, Summers was dictating to Kirby what he wanted.

The president concluded with a call to arms. “At one level, revising a curriculum is about endless committees, the structure of requirements, and the ways in which bureaucracies will function,” he said. “…On another level, very few things are more important. The world is shaped by what its leaders think, and they develop their beliefs, their attitudes and their capacities at places like this one. Harvard College has served this world for fifteen generations. We will do our part in the next generation.”

Outside the walls of the Yard, local high school students recruited by Rachel Fish were handing out fliers describing Sheik Zayed and the Zayed Centre. At lunchtime, under a tent on the divinity school lawn, Rachel Fish had received her diploma from William Graham. As he handed her a scroll, she handed him 130 pages of documentation and a petition, signed by 1,500 people, that called on the divinity school to return Sheik Zayed's gift. Fish received a smattering of extra applause from her classmates and a cheer of “Go, Rachel!” Graham did not react, except to accept the papers and place them on a table. Later that afternoon, Fish delivered the same material to Mass Hall.

As Harvard prepared for the third year of Larry Summers' presidency, the voices of dissent appeared to be growing quiet while the president appeared to be growing steadily more confident. What was uncertain was whether Summers had crushed the opposition to his presidency or if it was merely simmering underground, waiting to erupt.

O
n Sunday, August 24, 2003, readers of the
New York Times
awoke to find Larry Summers' visage staring at them from the cover of the
Times'
weekly magazine. “Campus Agitator,” shouted the cover blurb. The photo was a tight, merciless shot of the Harvard president, whose head dominated about three-quarters of the page. It was an arresting, uncomfortable image. Summers would turn forty-nine in November and his skin, mottled and increasingly furrowed around the mouth and eyes, was showing signs of age. His closely cropped hair was turning a Brillo-like gray on the sides. A small scar ran from his lower left chin to about half an inch below his lower lip. His lips were pursed as if in wary skepticism or judgment, and his chin and Adam's apple were sprinkled with a five-o'clock shadow. But Summers' eyes, staring directly at the reader, were clear and blue and focused. You could see his intensity in those eyes; they demanded that one return their gaze.

Written by reporter James Traub, the ensuing article was called “Harvard Radical,” and it was part of Summers' campaign to advance his agenda through the press. The
60 Minutes
television profile had fallen by the wayside after the war with Iraq had broken out, but this article, the better part of a year in the works, had finally panned out. Arguing that Harvard's president was “trying to revolutionize a powerful elite institution,” Traub traced Summers' time at Harvard from his selection through some of the early fights, including a portrayal of the Cornel West affair heavily sympathetic to Summers' side of things. The president's opening line in the story was one of his favorites: “The idea that we should be open to all ideas,” he told Traub, “is very different from the supposition that all ideas are equally valid.” Members of the Corporation, including D. Ron Daniel, Bob Rubin, and Hanna Gray, spoke out on Summers' behalf. “We agreed that we needed somebody more aggressive, more pushy, bolder” than Neil Rudenstine, Daniel said.

It was strange—the way they ran down the institution, Summers and the Corporation members sounded as if they didn't much respect their university. Readers could have been forgiven for wondering if Harvard was suffering from an autoimmune disorder in which its purported defenders had instead turned upon the university. Summers' argument about not all ideas being equally valid was a good example. It was a pithy line, the kind of tough-talking red meat that plays into the expectations of conservatives who consider Harvard a bastion of moral relativity in which—sexually, politically, intellectually—anything goes and nothing is judged (except, perhaps, for conservatives). Summers' axiom, which he had first delivered at his inauguration and used repeatedly thereafter, implied that such moral relativism ran rampant within the wacky world of Harvard Yard.

But of course, the reality was otherwise. One would have been hard-pressed to find even one professor at Harvard who considered all ideas equally valid. Such relativism was a concept straight out of the sixties, and even then, if it was held by anyone, it was a distinctly minority view. The president had deftly created a straw man, a caricature based on lingering memories of a painful past, that he marketed to outsiders as a realistic view of Harvard—and the outsiders bought it, because it fulfilled the preconceived notions they held of the university as the last stronghold of sixties radicalism. Hence the
Times'
descriptions of Summers as a modern-day “campus agitator” and “radical.” The return to standards was, ostensibly, the new radicalism. Larry Summers was throwing out the aging hippies, the intellectually flaccid, the promoters of high grades and low expectations. Or so he implied.

Also curious was the fact that the members of the Corporation had spoken—as a general rule, Corporation members never spoke to the press—and done so in a way that slighted Neil Rudenstine.
They wanted someone bolder.
By implication, Neil Rudenstine had been less than bold. Ever since Summers was chosen, Rudenstine had made it a point never to comment on his successor. At dinner parties, said people who knew him, he would listen to angry criticisms of Summers, colorful descriptions of behavior previously unheard of for a Harvard president, and say nothing, offering only the occasional raised eyebrow. For members of the Harvard Corporation to discuss Summers in a way that belittled Rudenstine struck many Harvard readers as singularly ungracious—if, perhaps, reflecting a hint of defensiveness about their choice of Summers.

Critics of Summers were notably absent from the
Times
piece—Traub explained that they had refused to go on the record—with just one exception. Political philosopher Michael Sandel said, “By training and temperament, economists are intellectual imperialists. They believe their models of rational choice can explain all human behavior. The question is whether Larry can rise above this prejudice and develop the broader intellectual sympathies he needs to be a great Harvard president.” A legitimate point—but then, if anyone could safely scrutinize Summers, it was Sandel. A tenured professor, Sandel taught “Moral Reasoning 22: Justice,” one of the college's most consistently popular courses. Moreover, his chair was about to be endowed by an estimated $4-million gift from Robert and Anne Bass of the Texas oil family, one of higher education's largest donors. Sandel had cover.

Other professors either refused to speak about Summers, refused to speak on the record, or uttered words of praise that they could never have imagined saying some months before. Continuing his pro-Summers diplomacy, Skip Gates declared that Summers “is not intimidated by the job. He's tremendously self-confident intellectually. He's going to make a great president.”

If Traub had one concern about Summers, it was whether the new president had to be quite so confrontational. (Traub was Harvard class of '76, though that fact was undisclosed in the article.) His story ends with an awkward moment in which he tells Summers that “I had been surprised by how intensely people disliked him.” Summers' explanation: people resisted change. This was the paradigm into which he had consistently put his detractors—not people who disagreed with his style or his ideas about what kind of change was needed, but an old guard fighting to retain the status quo. Traub pushes back, saying, no, it was Summers whom people didn't like. “I'm sorry to hear that,” Summers says “quietly.” But “I have an aggressive and challenging approach. And it may be there are times when I have done that in a way that people haven't felt respected. That's certainly never been my intent.” Then again, Summers says, “I don't think of leadership as a popularity contest.”

As Traub relates the story, it is hard not to feel some sympathy for Summers; few people enjoy being told that they are disliked. But at the same time, Summers' response is another constructed dichotomy, as if the choice were only between intense dislike and a “popularity contest.” If anything, the anecdote shows another side of Summers' quick-response intelligence. Even about something so deeply personal, he can instantly employ a rhetorical device to frame the issue in a more favorable light.

Two weeks later, the
New York Times Magazine
ran five reader letters regarding Traub's profile. None was from Cambridge; all were admiring of Summers. Typical was the man—not a Harvard graduate—who wrote, “Thank goodness someone has finally rattled the cage at Harvard. Lawrence Summers may not win the award for Mr. Congeniality, but at least he is willing to shake the tree of conventional knowledge at an institution so vaunted.” Elsewhere, the reaction was more mixed. Summers' mother told acquaintances that she thought the story, and particularly the last exchange, had been hard on her son. Summers himself was pleased with the article, but he noted dryly the complete lack of letters from Cambridge's 02138 zip code. Nonetheless, his supporters were delighted. “The
Times
piece was a triumph,” said Martin Peretz. “All the people who were critical of him were anonymous.” Peretz meant that the opposition to Summers had grown weaker and more afraid to declare itself.

And this was true. Among the faculty, the
Times
article caused a subtle but distinct reaction, a greater caution about challenging Summers based on a deeper awareness of how he was perceived beyond Cambridge. Summers, they saw, had a public stage that they did not, access to the media that they did not, and a national audience that eagerly consumed the storyline he had created for himself and sold to the reporters who dropped in on campus. Harvard was not the subject of the article, but its antagonist. Its president had created a paradox in which the faculty found themselves emasculated. On the one hand, his remarks fueled a long-standing strain of American anti-intellectualism. When Summers spoke of moral relativism on campus or implied that the university was unpatriotic, he confirmed the anti-elitism and mistrust of Harvard felt by some conservative Americans, particularly in a time of war and terrorism. On the other hand, Summers had commandeered the language of standards, of “excellence.” Having caricatured his opponents, he now held out a solution—his solution. It was like beating up a man and then offering to sell him health insurance.

This one-two punch was a strangely anti-intellectual device, the kind of maneuver Summers might have learned during his days on the MIT debate team or from his time in Washington politics. If its goal was to squelch dissent and help advance his agenda, it worked. With the exception of Skip Gates and a few others, Harvard professors weren't practiced at speaking through the media; scholars are not good with sound bites. Summers had established the terms of the debate, so whenever they protested his plans, they sounded as if they were protesting excellence. Those who were skilled at working with the press and interested in accommodation with power soon realized that it was better to play ball with Summers than to confront him in an arena where he had a distinct advantage. Several advantages, really—a press secretary, longtime experience with the media, the aura of the office, powerful people willing to speak on his behalf, the lazy but ubiquitous assumption that he, not the faculty, was Harvard's avatar. A single faculty member versus the president of Harvard was not a fair fight.

And so the faculty—most of it, anyway—fell silent.

They were not, by nature, a group that wanted to spend its time publicly debating the future of Harvard. They preferred to conduct their research and write their books. Many were less committed to the institution than professors in past eras had been, especially now that they had less and less say in its operation. Moreover, they saw how critics of the president were punished, while those who made the president look good were rewarded. Skip Gates was getting new money and new territory for his department because he had made his peace with the new president. (A fact that, though little known, was widely assumed.) Later in the year, Summers would name Laurence Tribe, who had co-written the affirmative action op-ed with the president, to the position of University Professor—Harvard's highest faculty honor, the title that Cornel West had once held. New Summers recruits such as Steven Pinker and Niall Ferguson were showcased at university events and overseas alumni gatherings.

In some ways, it had been an eventful summer. In late August the United Arab Emirates announced that it would close the Zayed Centre for good. Harvard then disclosed that it would postpone until August 2004 a decision on whether to keep Sheik Zayed's money. The university “has decided to put the gift on hold during the coming academic year,” said Lucie McNeil, although Harvard would continue the search for a candidate to fill the professorship. The announcement, coming as it did in the dead of summer, defused the controversy for twelve more months, after which the number of people paying attention would have further declined. “All that means,” insisted Rachel Fish, “is that in a year, when things quiet down, they can accept the money without having to make an issue of it publicly.” Like Zayed Yasin, another student caught up in controversy with Mass Hall, Fish never heard a word from Summers. Nor could Summers' name be found in any Harvard statement regarding the future of the Zayed gift. Nor, as Fish would have liked, was there any statement decrying anti-Semitism in the UAE. The closing of the Zayed Centre was progress. But you couldn't exactly say that Harvard was taking a moral stand.

Instead, Summers was promoting the founding of a new and different center, the Broad Institute, which was announced in late June. A partnership between Harvard, MIT, and the nearby Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, the Broad Institute would focus on turning information about the human genome into medical applications. Summers could not talk enough about his support for the new science center. After two years of his presidency, one of his priorities was coming to life in tangible form.

Summers was pleased with life in other, more personal ways. His relationship with Lisa New was strong and invigorating. The president was more relaxed when New was around, less confrontational, better company. People who spent time with the couple said that they were in love. To her friends, New described Summers as a big teddy bear, a vulnerable creature slightly incapable of taking care of himself. The English professor was spending more and more time at Elmwood, the president's mansion. When Summers' children came from Washington to visit, they would play with New's girls. New told friends that she was trying to learn economics, while Summers, even though he “doesn't have a metronomic bone in his body,” was trying to appreciate poetry.

New's influence extended beyond the intellectual. She and a servant employed at Elmwood would pick out Summers' clothing and set it out for him to wear, and their sartorial support made a difference. While his table manners didn't improve much, Summers did start tucking in and buttoning his shirts, and those shirts and his ties tended to go with his suits rather better than they had in the past. With New's encouragement, Summers was also trying to lose weight; he went on the Atkins diet, and the results were plain to see. As Summers lost weight, his face came into relief, looking longer and less boxy. His chest and stomach shrank so that his suits not only matched better, they fit better. Soon Summers replaced his original web page photo with a new head shot of a more svelte president.