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Journey to my MBA

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Harvard University Summers stepping down






From Harvard Website:

Summers to step down as president at end of academic year
Bok agrees to serve as interim president starting July 1

Lawrence H. Summers (Staff file photo Justin Ide/Harvard News Office)
Lawrence H. Summers announced today that he will conclude his tenure as president of Harvard University at the end of the 2005-06 academic year.

Since his appointment five years ago, Summers has spurred attention to renewing the undergraduate experience, guided the launch of innovative interdisciplinary initiatives in the sciences and beyond, and strongly expanded Harvard's international agenda. Under his leadership, the University has reached out to many more undergraduates from low-income families and also strengthened financial aid for graduate and professional students pursuing careers in public service. During his presidency, Harvard has achieved dramatic faculty growth, undertaken major investments in an array of new facilities, and taken the first concrete steps toward building Harvard's extended campus in Allston.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Letter from President Summers

Letter from the Corporation
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"Harvard's greatness has always come from its ability to evolve as the world and its demands change - to educate and draw forth the energy of each successive generation in new and creative ways," said Summers. "Believing deeply that complacency is among the greatest risks facing Harvard, I have sought for the last five years to prod and challenge the University to reach for the most ambitious goals in creative ways. As I leave the presidency, my greatest hope is that the University will build on the important elements of renewal that we have begun over the last several years."

"Since his appointment five years ago, Larry Summers has served Harvard with extraordinary vision and vitality," said the Fellows of Harvard College, members of the University's executive governing board, the Harvard Corporation, in a letter to the Harvard community. "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. Through his tenure as president, Harvard has both invigorated its academic programs and engaged more keenly with the complex challenges facing society. Harvard's paths forward will long bear the imprint of his vision.

"While this past year has been a difficult and sometimes wrenching one in the life of the University," the Fellows continued, "we look back on the past five years with appreciation for all that has been accomplished and for the charting of an ambitious forward course. We look ahead with confidence in the capacity of our faculty, students, staff, and alumni to embrace a future full of possibility and opportunity. Whatever our differences in perspective, and wherever we study or work within the University, all of us share a commitment to the progress of an institution whose aims are noble, whose traditions are strong, whose spirit is always restless, and whose promise - as embodied in the thousands of men and women who form the Harvard community - knows no bounds."

Derek Bok, Harvard's president from 1971 to 1991, has agreed to the Corporation's request that he serve as interim president of the University from July 1 until the conclusion of the search for a new president, which the Fellows said would begin promptly.

"I will do my best to carry out the Corporation's request," said Bok. "There is no institution I care about more deeply, and I will make every effort to work with colleagues to further the University's agenda during this transitional period."

Following an expected year-long sabbatical, Summers plans to return to the faculty to pursue his distinguished academic career in economics, public policy, and international affairs. The Fellows' letter said that the Corporation intends to appoint Summers as one of Harvard's select group of University Professors.

"From the day he took office, Larry Summers has worked tirelessly to provide Harvard students, particularly its undergraduates, with the best education possible," said Patti B. Saris, president of the Board of Overseers. "He has committed himself to strengthening Harvard's place as a world leader in the sciences, expanding its borders not only into Allston but internationally, and ensuring that Harvard is a place that all students can afford. Harvard has benefited from his energy and out-of-the-box thinking, and will no doubt continue to do so when President Summers again becomes Professor Summers."

Continued.....
================================================================
Here's the AP release

Harvard says Summers resigns as president By Jason Szep
Tue Feb 21, 5:15 PM ET

BOSTON (Reuters) - Harvard University President Lawrence Summers resigned on Tuesday after a turbulent five years and the most public faculty rebellion against a Harvard president in the Ivy League school's 370-year history.

Summers, a former U.S. Treasury secretary under president Bill Clinton, will step down at the end of the academic year. Derek Bok, who led Harvard from 1971 to 1991, will be interim president from July 1. Summers will stay on as a professor.

The resignation caps an increasingly rancorous standoff between Summers and disaffected Harvard staff, and came a week before faculty members were to vote in the second no-confidence motion against Summers in 11 months.

Summers, 51, whose brusque management style has won both praise and contempt, sparked controversy last year when he said innate differences between men and women may help explain why so few women work in the academic sciences.

He has since apologized repeatedly for his remarks.

But the abrupt resignation of arts and sciences dean William Kirby on January 27 deepened opposition against him. Several faculty have accused Summers of pushing Kirby out and called for his resignation at a faculty meeting this month.

"The university has been in a state of paralysis. I've never seen anything like this before," Farish A. Jenkins Jr., a Harvard zoology professor, told Reuters.

"Harvard can't be run by one man. It is a collaborative enterprise with many fine people," said Jenkins, one of a dozen professors who confronted Summers at a faculty meeting this month and suggested that he step down or be fired.

After a one-year sabbatical, Summers will teach economics, public policy, and international affairs.

Summers told journalists in a conference call that Harvard had changed for the better and was much less complacent now than 5 years ago. But he conceded that he could have "challenged the community more wisely and more respectfully.

"I feel very much regret for the rifts and the cleavages that have emerged between me and segments of the faculty of arts and sciences," he said.

STUDENT BACKING

The announcement followed a poll showing most Harvard students backed Summers even if, as one student put it, he "can be a little rough around the edges." In the poll conducted over the weekend by Harvard's student newspaper, 57 percent of 424 undergraduate students said Summers should not resign.

"I know the faculty hates him, but I think he's kind of running Harvard like a business -- and I respect that," one student, Derek Horton, told the newspaper.

The confidence vote was to be symbolic because only the seven-member governing board, the Harvard Corporation, has the power to appoint or remove the university's president.

The faculty body approved a no-confidence measure in March 2005. Two no-confidence votes would have been unprecedented.

Following the uproar over his remarks on women, Summers -- a Harvard alumnus and former faculty member -- pledged to change his tone, listen more to the Harvard community and do more to draw women to science and engineering.

Summers also was embroiled in a public feud with the African-American Studies department that erupted shortly after he became president. The once-vaunted department saw an exodus of top faculty.

Summers's presidency will be Harvard's shortest since Cornelius Felton died in 1862 after two years in office.
====================================================

1 Comments:

Blogger RC said...

Very interesting...it sounds to me like either Summers had a hard time knowing the right place at the right time...

or...maybe it was something else.

--RC of strangeculture.blogspot.com

5:38 AM  

Post a Comment

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