Harvard Rules

by Richard Bradley

  On May 29, about a week before commencement, Summers released a statement about the controversy. It read as follows:

  Concerns have been raised about the planned commencement speech of Zayed Yasin, who was chosen as one of this June’s student Commencement speakers by a duly appointed faculty committee. We live in times when, understandably, many people at Harvard and beyond are deeply apprehensive about events in the Middle East and possible reverberations in American life. Yet, especially in a university setting, it is important for people to keep open minds, listen carefully to one another and react to the totality of what each speaker has to say. I am pleased that there have been a number of constructive conversations that have addressed potential divisions in our community associated with his speech.

  Finally, I am told that Mr. Yasin recently received a threatening e-mail from an unidentified source. Direct personal threats are reprehensible and all of us who believe in the values of this university should condemn them in the strongest terms.

  To Yasin’s supporters, Summers’ statement was far from a vigorous defense of the values of tolerance and civil discourse in a university setting—not to mention of a student who’d done nothing wrong. “It was basically like saying, ‘It would be good if you don’t kill Zayed Yasin,’” said one faculty member. The first paragraph felt like an expression of sympathy toward those who were angry. And that line about Yasin being “chosen…by a duly appointed faculty committee” was clearly Summers’ way of distancing himself from the brouhaha.

  “The statement was weak,” Yasin said. “Especially when you consider that he’s not the kind of guy to mince words. There was no reference in it to me, or to the content of the speech. There was only reference to ‘constructive conversation,’ when there was no constructive conversation going on.” In fact, Summers hadn’t even called Yasin. Throughout the entire controversy, the university president never said a word to the beleaguered undergraduate commencement speaker.

  On June 5, the day before commencement, Summers gave a short address at the ROTC commissioning ceremony for Harvard students. “You know,” he said, “we venerate at this university—as we should—openness, debate, the free expression of ideas, as central to what we are all about and what we should be. But we must also respect and admire moral clarity when it is required….” Those words, too, seemed to indicate where Summers’ sympathies lay.

  The morning of June 6 dawned cold and gray, but there were still some thirty thousand people on hand for commencement. The ceremonies had traditionally begun with Harvard-themed music from the university’s history. On this day, at Summers’ instigation, “The Star Spangled Banner” would be played. “That is as it should be,” Summers had told the ROTC cadets, adding that it was always “a thrill” for him to hear the national anthem.

  Security was tight. For the first time ever, visitors had to pass through metal detectors to get into the Yard. For Zayed Yasin, security was even tighter. He spent the morning shadowed by an officer from the Harvard University Police Department, just in case any of those threats were real. And when the time came for him to deliver his speech, he was so nervous his legs were shaking underneath his gown. But he was a little angry, too. Looking out over the crowd, he could see the protesters wearing their red-white-and-blue ribbons. In anticipation of that, he’d donned a red-white-and-blue ribbon of his own. No one was going to take his patriotism away from him. He remembered that Summers thought he was going to throw away his speech—the suggestion still insulted him. The whole experience, he said later, “pulled some of the veneer of civilization off of Harvard. I saw how thin that veneer was—and underneath it was raw power politics.”

  By commencement tradition, just before the undergraduate orator gives his speech, he turns to the university president and bows. With Summers’ suspicion in mind, Yasin improvised a little. Just as he turned toward the president and began his bow, he gave Summers a quick but clearly visible wink. As if to say, I know what you think I’m going to do…and probably I won’t. But maybe I will. Seated in the president’s chair, Summers did not appear to react.

  Yasin didn’t ad lib, of course. Giving his speech as he’d written it had become a point of pride to him. “Harvard graduates have a responsibility to leave their mark on the world,” he said, trying to make himself heard over the pelting rain that had begun to fall. “So let us struggle, and let us make our mark. And I hope and pray that our children, our grandchildren, and those who take our seats in the years to come, will have cause to be proud.”

  It was hard to tell because of all the umbrellas that popped up, but when the speech was done, a large part of the crowd appeared to be giving Zayed Yasin a standing ovation.

  Summers, however, was neither impressed nor amused. Several times at dinners and cocktail parties in the days and weeks following commencement, he would relate the story of Yasin and the wink. When he did, according to people who heard his account, Summers referred to Yasin as “the little shit.”

  In his second year as president, Summers would make sure that such unfortunate incidents would not be repeated.

  6

  Larry Summers and the Bully Pulpit

  At the beginning of Larry Summers’ second year, Harvard was in a state of upheaval. Summers was shaking up the status quo, but few could tell whether the change was for the better, might make things worse, or was simply change for its own sake, so that the president could claim its existence as an accomplishment in and of itself. Intentionally or not—and people argued it both ways—everything Summers did divided the university. Mostly, the divide was Larry Summers and the Harvard Corporation against everyone else. And the Corporation was aloof, invisible, which left Summers as the source of division.

  Dressing down Cornel West was a good example, but hardly the only one. Calling for the return of ROTC and a renewed patriotism had also split the faculty and students. First, Summers seemed not to care that the military discriminated against gays. He generally did not mention the issue when talking about ROTC, though this, more than any Vietnam-era hangover, was now the main reason why Harvard did not want military recruiters on campus. His emphasis on patriotism also struck many faculty as anti-intellectual. Harvard’s mission was to search for truth, regardless of whether that truth was considered patriotic by newspaper columnists and Washington politicians. Importing the leadership style and perks of a D.C. powerbroker further irritated a culture that prioritized the university over its president. Even Summers’ lamentable manners and aggressive conversational style had people splitting into camps. His supporters argued that such behavior reflected refreshing candor; what you saw was what you got. Critics responded that Summers’ manifest lack of respect for underlings was simply an arrogant man’s way to bully and manipulate.

  These debates were not easily resolved because, in part, Summers’ tangible accomplishments were still few. He spoke frequently about the importance of the new campus in Allston, but there were as yet no major public developments on that front, just behind-the-scenes planning. Nor had the much-hyped curricular review taken form. The faculty, not Summers, had attempted to curb the problem of grade inflation by adopting a curb on honors effective with the class of2005. (Under the policy, only 50 percent of any given class could be awarded honors.) And while Summers’ rhetoric about ROTC had made national headlines, the president hadn’t actually done anything to bring ROTC back on campus. Doing so would have required a vote of the faculty, which appeared to take the anti-gay discrimination issue more seriously than Summers did, and Summers didn’t want to stake political capital on a vote he would probably have lost. Instead he spoke at the ROTC graduation ceremonies and persuaded the editors of the Harvard Yearbook to allow seniors to list ROTC in their blurbs of activities. (In the past, students could list only university-sanctioned activities.)

  Of course, it was to be expected that a new president would spend his first year learning about the university, and Summers had certainly done that. Even his fiercest critics ga
ve him credit for immersing himself in the details of Harvard life, getting up to speed on the operations of the graduate schools, reaching out to undergraduates, and keeping a daunting schedule. Summers even found time to travel to China, Japan, and London, trips that promoted Harvard’s global presence while boosting Summers’ own international profile.

  The president was also making progress on another crucial front: filling the university’s high-level academic positions with his own people. In October 2001, Summers had named as provost Steven Hyman, a former Harvard professor of psychiatry and the well-respected director of the National Institute of Mental Health. Generally described as a university’s chief academic officer, the provost is roughly comparable to the role of the United States vice-president, which is to say, poorly defined but potentially powerful depending on how much responsibility the president delegates: Hyman quipped that his job was “to do whatever Larry doesn’t want to.” By appointing Hyman, Summers signaled his determination to emphasize the sciences, and particularly the life sciences such as biology, neurobiology, and biochemistry. He was convinced that Harvard had missed out on the high-tech gold rush of the nineties that had helped enrich Stanford. Biomedicine, Summers often said, would be the next scientific frontier to combine research, life-saving discoveries, and profit, and this time Harvard would not miss the opportunity.

  The Hyman appointment also compensated for the loss of another influential scientist, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean and chemist Jeremy Knowles, from Summers’ administration. In May of 2002, Knowles had stepped down from the deanship, telling colleagues that one year into the new presidency was an appropriate time for him to go. Summers replaced Knowles with William Kirby, a historian of China who had also served as chairman of the history department. With Kirby, Summers showed his zeal for focusing the university on the world beyond the United States. “History teaches us that the relationship between great powers shapes eras, and the relationship between the United States and China will shape this next era,” Summers said before appointing Kirby. Plus, Kirby had long advocated study abroad, another of Summers’ globalization-related priorities.

  Still, there were those who thought that Summers might have had another reason for choosing Kirby—because Summers considered him malleable.

  Traditionally, the FAS dean is a locus of enormous power, a figure who can set his own agenda and parry a president’s attempts to encroach upon his authority. The dean’s primary responsibility is to serve as the faculty’s intellectual leader. Regardless of his own academic specialty, he is expected to promote the academic values and interests of the seven hundred or so scholars over whom he presides. In order to do that, the dean must have the intellectual respect of his colleagues on the faculty. After all, he leads perhaps the greatest body of scholars in the world.

  The FAS dean wields powerful tools. For one thing, he has money—more money than the president has. FAS owns by far the largest share of the Harvard endowment, about 40 percent of the current $23 billion total—the numbers fluctuate—and its dean draws up the FAS budget, which is approaching $1 billion a year. From his office in University Hall, the dean doles out space to faculty and departments, approves salary increases, helps find jobs for faculty spouses—or does not. He has veto power over all tenure recommendations, and virtually nothing can be more damaging to an academic’s career than to have his nomination rejected before it even gets to the Harvard president—that’s a clear sign that he might want to consider another career.

  The dean’s donor pool, the alumni of Harvard College, is both loyal and, on the whole, rich. And fundraising has benefits other than cash: an adept dean can build a constituency with alumni who are more devoted to the university than are those of any other Harvard school. Harvard College alumni can have an enormous impact on internal university disputes, whether by giving money for targeted purposes or by threatening to withhold it.

  The FAS dean under Larry Summers would, in theory, possess one more critical power: the mandate to shape a new curriculum for the college. Revising its undergraduate curriculum is an act of self-examination Harvard performs about every twenty-five years, and it means that, academically speaking, everything is up for grabs. What courses would be required, and which diminished in importance? Would professors have to teach more or less frequently, and how would that affect their research? What kind of teaching would be most valued—the ability to deliver a spellbinding lecture to hundreds of students, or the knack for leading a small, intellectually intense seminar?

  The structure, priorities, and requirements of a new curriculum affect the status of every Harvard College professor, leading to greater or lesser intellectual influence, prestige, and earning power. And as the leader of the faculty, the FAS dean is the traditional head of a curricular review. He guides a process that affects the futures of every single member of his faculty. They can make his job extremely difficult, either by opposing his agenda at faculty meetings and other forums, or simply by refusing to buy into it. Faculty lethargy can be as devastating to a dean as faculty opposition.

  During a curricular review, a dean has two other advantages. First, he—for Harvard has never had a female FAS dean—can use the review to promote himself in the media, which inevitably pays attention to a revamping of the Harvard curriculum. Those advertisements for himself are helpful if the dean has higher academic ambitions. In addition, the dean can exploit the curricular review as a fundraising vehicle, meeting with alums to discuss his new priorities—more faculty, innovative new programs, that sort of thing—and solicit their support. The one pitch guaranteed to make Harvard alumni pull out their checkbooks is the argument that the university needs money to improve undergraduate education. Everyone wants the Harvard that their children will attend to be even better than the one they went to.

  Two of Kirby’s recent predecessors proved how important the dean’s role was. Erudite, worldly Henry Rosovsky, dean from 1973 to 1984, and again for a year in 1990 and 1991, was immensely popular with the faculty, whose prerogatives he protected and whose shortcomings he addressed with tact and discretion. Rosovsky’s close bond with Derek Bok also helped. He rarely challenged Bok because the two men rarely disagreed. The patrician Bok was secure, even ambivalent, about power; he was not averse to sharing it. Emerging from the 1960s, Bok knew that any perception that he monopolized authority could invite resentment and opposition.

  British, highly intelligent, and charming, Jeremy Knowles, dean during the Rudenstine years, was considered a shrewd practitioner of academic politics. After Neil Rudenstine’s breakdown, he did little to challenge the authority of his deans, and everyone knew it. So Knowles benefited from the perception of power, which helped make the autonomy he did have even more tangible. Knowles had a reputation for telling people what they wanted to hear, and he was not entirely trusted. But he could and did stand up to Rudenstine when he felt the president was encroaching on his and the faculty’s authority. “He was a fierce defender of the faculty’s independence,” said one of Knowles’ colleagues. Further strengthening his position, Knowles also had a healthy relationship with the Harvard Corporation. Fellow James Richardson Houghton, former chief executive of Corning Incorporated, was so impressed with Knowles that when Knowles resigned as dean, Houghton appointed him to Corning’s board of directors.

  About Bill Kirby, though, there was concern.

  A boyish-looking man with square glasses and salt-and-pepper hair cropped almost crewcut short, Kirby looks like a G-man from the 1950s. His humor sometimes feels similarly dated. When speaking to alumni, he likes to joke that when he was an undergrad at Dartmouth, his “idea of study abroad was a weekend at Wellesley College.” Visiting that all-female school not far from Cambridge, Kirby sometimes adds, “I could date girls who dated Harvard men.”

  Soon enough, Kirby would become a Harvard man himself, enrolling in graduate study of history in Cambridge. After earning his Ph.D. in 1981, he spent eleven years teaching at Washington University in St
. Louis before Harvard brought him back in 1992. Students considered him a committed and enthusiastic teacher, and as chair of the history department from 1995 to 2000 Kirby was widely credited with rebuilding a department that had fallen into deep decline due to bitter internal feuding.

  Some of his peers, however, thought that Kirby was perhaps too anxious for advancement within Harvard’s ranks. He happily performed all the thankless tasks that signal a professor’s desire to become a dean, such as chairing the search for a Harvard librarian and serving on the board of the Harvard University Press. Such activities inevitably take time away from scholarship, and to Kirby’s colleagues, they gave off an unmistakable whiff of ambition—not intellectual ambition, which was certainly commonplace among Harvard professors, but rather a lust for administrative power. Larry Summers would have recognized that scent. He would also have known how useful it might be to choose a dean who longed for the job—who might accept impositions, burdens, even degradations that other, less aspiring candidates would not tolerate.

  Many of Knowles’ colleagues believed that he resigned because he saw which way the wind was blowing. Larry Summers, some said, had more respect for those who chose not to work for him than for those who did. Certainly by the end of Summers’ first year, the signs of his intention to micromanage undergraduate education and diminish the dean’s authority—the Cornel West matter being the most blatant among them—were hard to miss. Bill Kirby either disagreed, or did not detect those warnings, or simply chose to disregard them.

  The appointment of a new provost and dean were not the only personnel matters that required Summers’ attention. As his second year in office began, he wanted to make sure that one faculty member did not leave and that one administrator did.