Under fire, Harvard president quits

Embattled Harvard president Lawrence Summers succumbed yesterday to mounting pressure to resign his post, calling it quits and ending months of speculation about his future at the helm of one of the nation's most prestigious universities.

Summers, a former U.S. Treasury secretary who was once hailed as one of the youngest tenured members of Harvard's faculty, said he will step down June 30 after only five years as president, making his the shortest term for a Harvard leader since the Civil War. He is expected to take a yearlong sabbatical before returning to Cambridge as a professor of economics and public policy, a statement from the university said.

The search for Summers' replacement will begin soon, a letter from the five members of the Harvard Corporation, the university's governing board, said. In the interim, former president Derek Bok, 75, will reassume the responsibilities he held from 1971 to 1991.

Amid a backdrop of students chanting "stay, Larry, stay" and "five more years," Summers told a group of 150 supporters yesterday that "this has not been a simple day in my life," The Harvard Crimson reported. But, he added, "Harvard's greatest days are in the future."

In an interview Tuesday night, President Tilghman, who took office the same year as Summers, discussed his tenure at Harvard and praised him for having "moved the agenda forward" in several key areas.

"I think he had in his mind to accomplish what I think are very important things for Harvard," Tilghman said, noting that she approved of Summers' emphasis on improving the undergraduate educational experience at Harvard and on funding stem cell research at a time when the federal government was not doing so.

"He had identified things that were very important for Harvard and that was one thing I really admired him for," she added.

Yale president Richard Levin described Summers as "a man of great intelligence and vision," the Yale Daily News reported Wednesday. "I'm sorry for him, and I'm sorry for Harvard."

In a letter to the Harvard community, Summers said that "rifts" between him and members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), a key faculty group at the university, had made it "infeasible for me to advance the agenda of renewal that I see as crucial to Harvard's future."

Criticism of him climaxed in recent weeks as Summers roiled FAS members by his leadership style and the way he had handled various controversies during his term. Tensions mounted in recent weeks with news first broken by the Crimson that respected Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby resigned under pressure from Summers.

A no confidence vote by the FAS was scheduled for Feb. 28 and could have booted Summers from the bottom up, with the lack of support from a few hundred faculty members likely signaling the end of his presidency. Summers had narrowly survived a similar vote less than a year ago.

Members of the corporation had reportedly been considering firing Summers and had in recent weeks consulted with faculty on the best course of action, according to prior media reports. Summers' resignation pre-empted the possibility the corporation would outright fire him, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday morning.

It was "with regret" that the five corporation members accepted Summers' resignation, their letter to the Harvard community said, before going on to applaud his accomplishments as president.

"Larry Summers has served Harvard with extraordinary vision and vitality," they wrote in their letter. "He has brought to the leadership of the University a sense of bold aspiration and initiative, a prodigious intelligence, and an insistent devotion to maximizing Harvard's contributions to the realm of ideas and to the larger world."

Controversial leader

Summers had previously stirred up angst in 2002 when he criticized Cornel West GS '80 for participating in Rev. Al Sharpton's presidential campaign and making a spoken-word rap album while on medical leave. West later opted to move to Princeton's religion department. He did not respond to a request seeking comment.

The first hints that Summers might have to resign under faculty pressure came in January 2005 when opposition to him crystallized around remarks he made at an economics conference in Cambridge. He implied that women obtained fewer high-level positions in the sciences and engineering because of a possible lack of "intrinsic aptitude."

In March of that year, a "lack of confidence" motion was brought before the faculty where it passed 218 to 185 with 18 abstaining, keeping Summers in the presidency but weakening his stature significantly.

Before the vote, Summers expressed regret for his comments, which drew national media attention, but still provoked vocal disapproval in Cambridge and beyond. Prominent academics and scientists –– including Tilghman and Princeton engineering dean Maria Klawe — blasted Summers' remarks.

Klawe told The Daily Princetonian that Summers' comments were "irresponsible and damaging," and Tilghman made several public statements in opposition to what Summers said. She also cosigned a statement last February with Stanford president John Hennessy and MIT president Susan Hockfield in which the three prominent university presidents and scientists criticized Summers' remarks on women in science.

But Tilghman said yesterday that the incident was water under the bridge. "I think it's ancient history," she said, adding that Summers had issued numerous statements clarifying his position.

Former Princeton provost Neil L. Rudenstine '56, who was Summers' predecessor at Harvard, declined to comment through his assistant. Rudenstine cited his policy not to comment on Harvard or the conduct of his successor.

— With an update from the Yale Daily News that did not appear in the print edition of this story.