Moving On, Summers Outlines a Fresh Start

Pressing to move beyond the controversy that ensnarled his presidency last semester, Lawrence H. Summers yesterday released his first-ever state of the University letter, a lengthy manifesto that appeared intended to demonstrate the progress he has made in four years as president as well as placate the fiercest faculty critics of his administration.

The nearly 8,500-word letter, distributed to the Harvard community by e-mail yesterday afternoon, included no new developments and generally reflected the priorities Summers has stressed since the beginning of his tenure, including the life sciences, global education, and the University’s expansion into Allston. But in stressing his commitment to “collective thinking” and pledging a renewed investment in the humanities, Summers also seemed to direct his letter at the criticisms of his leadership that emerged from several contentious meetings of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) last semester.

Of perhaps greatest significance was the existence of the letter at all, after four years of eschewing the sort of broadly defined presidential status reports that had once been a time-honored tradition at Harvard before Summers’ time. Having identified outreach and collegiality as key themes of his presidency in the new school year, the letter represented Summers’ first large-scale effort toward that end. His spokesman, John Longbrake, said the letter was “an invitation for further dialogue” with the Harvard community.

Summers began the letter, in his third paragraph, with a thinly veiled reference to the “events during the first half of 2005,” when the Faculty voted that they lacked confidence in his leadership and Summers drew nationwide criticism for his remarks on the intrinsic aptitude of women in science. But he quickly pushed forward by identifying nine priorities that covered broad swaths of the University and seemingly left no issue, large or small, unmentioned.

FAS and, specifically, the College were at the forefront of Summers’ letter, with the president emphasizing progress on the Curricular Review, which was stalled last semester, and smaller improvements to class sizes and the availability of freshman seminars.

“The University makes no investment more important than in building and supporting an outstanding faculty,” Summers wrote, calling the ongoing increase in faculty at FAS “the first period of substantial growth in well over a generation—growth essential to the fulfillment of the faculty’s curricular and research aspirations.”

In three separate portions of his letter, Summers mentioned Professor Evelynn M. Hammonds, who was appointed this summer as the University’s first senior vice provost for faculty development and diversity.

The letter was, in many ways, a roll call of Harvard’s key players, with shout outs going to most (though not all) of the University’s deans as well as notable alumni involved in University projects, including Yo-Yo Ma ’76, founder of the Silk Road Project, and Frank O. Gehry, who has consulted on Harvard’s master plan for the Allston campus.

Summers wrote extensively, though only in broad terms, about the University’s expansion into Boston’s Allston neighborhood, by far the most ambitious project of his presidency. Committing to a rough timetable, Summers wrote that the first phase of development in Allston was “likely to be carried out over the next 10 to 15 years,” which could amount to the remainder of Summers’ tenure, if he serves as long as many of his predecessors.

He said the University hoped to start “the design and approval process” for the first major building of the new Allston campus, a 500,000-square-foot science complex, in the current academic year.

In calling for “a careful and broadly collaborative planning process” for Allston, Summers struck a markedly different tone than he had in past Faculty meetings, when he annoyed professors by appearing to leave them little say in Allston development. Asked at a meeting in November 2003 whether the Faculty would be allowed to vote on Allston plans, Summers replied with a blunt and, to many professors, jarring, “No.”

The Faculty will still have no vote, but Summers pledged to engage in extensive discussions with his many constituencies.

“We will also be engaged with increased intensity this year in discussions with the community and with local leaders regarding our plans and the many contributions we expect to make to urban life in Allston,” Summers wrote.

The discussion of Allston in the letter jived with a lengthy section on Summers’ plans for expanding the University’s resources in the life sciences, many of which will find their roots across the Charles River.

But as much as Summers focused on “the rising salience of scientific ventures,” a frequent refrain of his presidency, he gave equal space to “affirm the importance of the arts and humanities as critical foundations of a college curriculum and vital areas for scholarship and creative expression.” Many humanities professors have expressed concern that the focus on science in Allston will come at the expense of the University’s commitment to their academic interests.

On the whole, Summers’ wide-ranging letter reflected a renewed public-relations campaign to refocus the Harvard community on his priorities.

For Summers, whose presidency is often defined among some faculty circles in terms of the periods before and after “1/14,” when he gave his now-infamous speech at the National Bureau of Economic Research, the imperative to move beyond that date is as strong now as ever.

—Staff writer Zachary M. Seward can be reached at seward@fas.harvard.edu.