Harvard Rules

by Richard Bradley

  In February 2002, Summers made a cameo appearance in an Army recruitment video. Standing in front of the Yard’s famous statue of John Harvard, which tour guides describe as “the third most widely visited statue in the country after the Statue of Liberty and the Washington Monument,” he announced, “I am proud of the Harvard ROTC students who participate in the ROTC program…. Their work is America’s work.”

  Eradicating the corrosive legacy of the 1960s also meant re-building the trust between the president and students. One undergraduate who asked Summers’ opinion of the 1960s got this response: “As you and I meet today,” Summers said, “I think there is a kind of mutual respect between us. I talk with the assumption that you’re not going to turn around and write an editorial in the Crimson tomorrow saying that Larry Summers is an asshole for [espousing] the following ideas, and you hold the assumption that I’m listening carefully to you and responding thoughtfully. Those assumptions would have been the exact opposite in the 1960s.” Just in case, Summers always had an aide sitting in on his meetings with students, partly so that he could keep track of their concerns, but partly so that if they did talk to the Crimson, he could ensure the veracity of their memories.

  Summers wanted students and faculty to know that he could listen to them. But during his first year as president of Harvard, many students and faculty members began to wonder if he really was listening. Judging from his actions, it certainly didn’t look that way.

  Part of the problem—a large part—was stylistic. Summers had come to Cambridge after a decade in Washington, and he carried the culture of his former city with him. At Treasury, Summers had enjoyed the trappings of power, and at Harvard he replicated as many of those perks as possible. When star-struck students approached him bearing dollar bills for him to autograph—bills that already bore his signature from his time as treasury secretary—the new president was delighted to oblige. Image was important. He hired a decorator to redo the president’s mansion, Elmwood, and printed up elegant stationery with “Elmwood” written on it. The stationery looked like “a wedding invitation,” said one of its recipients. He replaced the aging Lincoln Neil Rudenstine had used with a brand-new Town Car. That shiny black sedan was all over campus—outside the Faculty Club, the Kennedy School, Loeb House, with Summers’ driver waiting patiently inside, often for hours at a time. Though cars are generally banned from Harvard Yard, Summers’ Lincoln was constantly idling on the macadam in front of Mass Hall, a charging cell phone and a can of Diet Coke—a Summers addiction—perched in the rear-seat cup holders. Its license plate read simply “1636,” the year of Harvard’s founding.

  Summers quickly surrounded himself with Washington veterans, including several who had lost their jobs when George W. Bush took office. Familiar though they were with Washington’s corridors of power, they had little or no Harvard experience. For his chief of staff, Summers hired a thirty-year-old former Treasury staffer named Marne Levine, a graduate of Miami University, in Ohio. A former Hillary Clinton aide, Sharon Kennedy, was hired as an event planner and alumni liaison. Alan Stone, once a speechwriter for President Clinton, became the vice-president for government, community, and public affairs. An aide to senator Ted Kennedy, Colleen Richards Powell, became another Summers staffer. For his “special assistant to the president”—no such position existed under Rudenstine—Summers brought in Michael O’Mary, a 2000 Harvard graduate who’d been an advance man for Al Gore. Lucie McNeil, a young press aide to British prime minister Tony Blair, would later sign on as Summers’ personal press secretary. Her title was Senior Communications Director, Office of News and Public Affairs, but McNeil really had only one job: to promote Larry Summers in the media. This too was a position that had not existed in the Rudenstine administration.

  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 pre
ss 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.”

  Farther down the road, after relations between the Crimson and Summers had deteriorated, the paper ran a photo essay chronicling Summers’ fluctuating weight. And the Crimson was gentle compared with some student publications. “This just in from Mass Hall,” announced one anonymous column in a student humor magazine called Demon. “Larry Summers is really, really fat. He’s not the same size as the average human—he’s fatter! He’s above average in fatness!”

  Quickly, the outside press picked up on the problem. On November 10 that first fall, the Harvard football team played the University of Pennsylvania at Harvard Stadium, and, along with a number of professors, Summers participated in a halftime contest of the children’s game “Red Rover.” But as Summers ran across the field, his sweatpants plunged down to what the Boston Herald called “the upper-thigh area.” The Herald quoted one observer saying, “He was wearing crimson-colored briefs that were in a wedgie!”