Summers' Dilemma: 'What Now?'

Standing alone on the stage of the Loeb Drama Center last March, minutes after the Faculty of Arts and Sciences issued an unprecedented rebuke of his leadership, University President Lawrence H. Summers looked stunned and defeated. Turning to no one in particular, he wondered aloud, “What now?”

It was a good question, and in the six months since that no-confidence vote, Summers has ever so slowly begun to offer an answer.

Yesterday he appeared before the freshman class in Tercentenary Theater to mark a new start—for himself, as much as the Class of 2009. Summers told them, “I found my way, and you will find yours.”

He made no mention of last semester’s crisis—in public, at least, Summers has moved on—but it did not go unnoticed that the guest speaker at Opening Exercises, Brazelton Professor of Pediatrics Judith Palfrey, was a woman in science.

And a refrain Summers used to frequently invoke well before he faced the faculty’s fury took on new significance yesterday. “We are a community that is committed to the authority of ideas,” he said, “not the idea of authority.”

Still, the key question Summers posed six months ago—“What now?”—hangs in the air today, at the beginning of a new school year, just as it did then.

The president begins his fifth year at Harvard with a reshaped senior staff, after even some of Summers’ strongest faculty supporters criticized his advisors last semester.

A. Clayton Spencer, a veteran Massachussetts Hall staffer from the days of Neil L. Rudenstein, has been promoted to vice president for policy, where she will assume broad oversight of Summers’ administration in a position that has never previously existed.

“Harvard has ambitious goals in a variety of areas,” Spencer said in a statement, “and as we move forward, the emphasis increasingly will be on effective execution.”

The restructuring in Mass. Hall is part of a broader initiative to expand the size and scope of the central administration.

Provost Steven E. Hyman is growing his office with three new vice-provost positions, including the role of senior vice provost for faculty development and diversity, formed in the wake of Summers’ comments on women in science. That post has been filled by Evelynn M. Hammonds, professor of the history of science and African and African American studies, who recommended the new position as part of the Task Force on Women Faculty, which she chaired.

At the same time, the lead staffer for that task force, Katarzyna E. “Kasia” Lundy ’95, has been promoted to Summers’ chief of staff, replacing Jason M. Solomon ’93-’95, who left last spring.

“These changes reflect the importance President Summers places on improving communication and coordination across the University,” Summers’ spokesman, John Longbrake, wrote in an e-mail. “We believe that Clayton and Kasia, working together as part of the senior administrative team, will help make Mass. Hall more responsive to the University community.”

Longbrake is himself a newcomer to Summers’ senior staff, having taken over last spring as senior director of communications after Lucie McNeil left abruptly in the midst of last semester. Most recently the assistant secretary for international affairs at Yale, Longbrake worked in the office of public affairs at the U.S. Treasury while Summers was secretary.

The slew of new assignments have rapidly changed the face of Mass. Hall. With Spencer’s promotion, five of Summers’ seven vice-presidents are now women.

In an interview yesterday, Summers’ former chief of staff at the Treasury, Sheryl Sandberg ’91, said Summers was “a great person to work for.”

“The thing that killed me about all the criticism he received last spring,” Sandberg said, “is that he’s pretty great with women on his staff.”

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