Alumni Keep Eye on Summers

Professors are not the only ones who have been vocal about University President Lawrence H. Summers’ governance of Harvard. In fact, the controversy has attracted the attention of another significant constituency—one that can put its money where its mouth is.

In recent weeks, some of the top individual donors to Harvard—whose contributions help fund student financial aid, the forthcoming Allston expansion, and Summers’ salary—have for the most part stood by Summers, expressing more concern about the narrow focus of the debate than about Summers’ remarks themselves.

Several alumni who have contributed “Leadership Gifts” to the Harvard College Fund in 2004—donations ranging from $100,000 to over $1 million—said in interviews this week that they support Summers’ leadership.

“President Summers should be thanked. Let the controversy bring about faster change,” Gwill E. York ’79, founder and managing director of Lighthouse Capital Partners, wrote in an e-mail. “The debate should be about the points made, not about whether they should have been made at all.”

She defended Summers’ remarks, calling them a “non-exhaustive list of plausible explanations.”

“He didn’t say he likes it the way it is or accepts it as the way it has to be,” York wrote.

And she added that she would like the discourse to shift towards addressing ways of attaining gender equality among science faculty and overcoming “systemic challenges,” and not on attacking Summers.

“No matter what the multi-faceted causes are for where we are today, surely we can make the pool of talent available to the leading organizations large enough to reach this goal in the next few years,” she wrote.

John A. Sprague ’74, managing partner at the investment firm Jupiter Partners LLC, said the climate on campus reminded him of his own days at Harvard, when, he recalled, Polaroid founder and Harvard dropout Edwin H. Land was slated to speak about Colorvision on campus.

But students, charging that Polaroid sold supplies to apartheid South Africa, pressured Land to cancel his speech.

This 1971 incident, which was part of a larger debate about divestment from South Africa at the time, was characterized by narrow-minded activism and by “the shouting down of other voices,” Sprague said.

Sprague, a Republican, said he was initially concerned about Summers’ previous political involvements. Now, he calls himself a supporter of the president.

“I’m sure he’ll learn a huge lesson from this. I think he can be an enormously strong and good leader for Harvard,” Sprague said.

Others are pleased with Summers for starting what they say is a much-needed debate.

Paul J. Zofnass ’69, president of the Environmental Financial Consulting Group, Inc., said he’s happy to see both the president and the Faculty airing their views and believes the discourse will create a “fresher, cleaner” analysis of the broader issue of discrimination.

“I think [Summers] is appropriately questioning everything,” said Zofnass. “One of his strengths is that he is very comfortable pointing out all the possibilities and challenging them.”

Zofnass called Summers “intelligently provocative,” and said that universities have an obligation to expose problems for discussion and thought.

“If not Harvard, who?” Zofnass said.

The alumni response to the Summers controversy, however, has not been uniformly in his favor.

Shelley G. Burtt ’80 said she took issue with Summers’ remarks on women, but that she thought they would not adversely affect donations from alumni.

“Alumni give for many reasons, most unrelated to their view of the particular person serving as president of the University,” Burtt wrote in an e-mail.

—Staff writer Nicholas M. Ciarelli can be reached at ciarelli@fas.harvard.edu.