Summers Balked at Early Apology

A day after his now-infamous remarks on women in science were made public, University President Lawrence H. Summers gathered his senior staff inside his Massachusetts Hall office to plot a response. Most of the staff members told their boss that he would have to begin apologizing to the Harvard community. But Summers disagreed.

“This is bullshit,” he said, according to two people who received detailed accounts of the meeting later that day.

Summers was hesitant to apologize for his remarks, which suggested that “issues of intrinsic aptitude” could account for the scarcity of female scientists on elite college faculties. But on his desk lay a blistering letter from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ Standing Committee on Women, the first indication that the dust-up over his remarks would not subside. He would have to reply.

“The consensus was: apologize,” recalled one individual briefed on the meeting. “And Larry knew it was the right move, but he still maintained that he had the right to say what he said.”

Summers’ advisers argued that a forthright apology might snuff out the controversy before it intensified, according to the two sources. That assessment, in hindsight, may have been overly optimistic. But in any event, Summers was not on board.

Penning his response to the committee later that afternoon, the president did not apologize, acknowledging only that he “misjudged the impact” of his role in the conference at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Summers, who also conceded that he “could have done a better job framing” his remarks, offered to meet with the committee at a later date. He signed the letter, “Best, Larry.”

“The letter was carefully worded,” said one of the sources, who was familiar with the internal strategy of the president’s office at the time. “It tried to be conciliatory, but nobody in Mass. Hall thought it was strong enough.”

It wasn’t. The committee was not assuaged by the letter, and Summers continued to field intensifying criticism for his remarks. Inside Mass. Hall, where work is conducted in library voices and the loudest sound is usually the grandfather clock in the foyer, tension was escalating.

The conflict between Summers and his senior staff, which played out while a larger struggle with the Faculty ensued, adds a new element to last year’s turmoil and suggests that the president may have been fighting many of his battles on his own. With his presidency in crisis, it was Summers himself—backed by a few confidantes outside Mass. Hall—who resisted kowtowing to the Faculty in the days before the controversy turned into a national uproar.

PRIVATELY RESOLUTE

Over the past year, The Crimson spoke to a half dozen individuals with varying degrees of access to the internal strategy in Mass. Hall. They asked not to be identified, citing several reasons—including their job security and relationship with Summers—for requesting anonymity. And while their recollections occasionally differed on minor points, this article only contains accounts that could be corroborated by multiple sources.

Summers’ spokesman, John Longbrake, declined to respond to the information in this story. “We are not going to comment on anonymous subjective accounts of internal discussions,” he said in a statement. “Our focus is on the future.”

At the Jan. 18, 2005, strategy session in Summers’ office, one of at least a dozen that would occur over the following three months, the president was dismissive of Faculty members who had criticized his remarks and said he thought the issue would soon blow over, according to the two individuals briefed on the meeting.

Summers expressed similar views to at least four other people in that same initial week of troubles. In interviews, all of them remembered Summers calling the controversy “bullshit.”

The uproar at Harvard was also a hot topic of discussion at several private dinner parties the president attended last semester in Cambridge, New York, and Washington, according to people who were there. Two individuals who attended separate parties with Summers recalled hearing the president, in reference to the Faculty’s criticism of his leadership, say the same thing: “It has not increased my faith in humanity.”

Even late in the semester, after the Faculty voted that they lacked confidence in his leadership, Summers was privately resolute. At a party after the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington on April 30, Summers told a reporter for The New York Observer that he was not concerned by what he called “whiny” professors, according to a report in the newspaper.

Summers’ personal feelings about the controversy posed a problem for his senior staff, who were trying to convince the president to sound a more repentant tone in public. But according to several people familiar with the discussions in Mass. Hall, Summers was reluctant to bend on two key points: academic freedom, which he felt should have protected his right to hypothesize on unsettled scientific issues, and the faculty’s criticisms of his leadership, which he thought were unfair and ill-willed.

And while Summers would eventually disavow his remarks on women in science and repeatedly apologize to the public, his early refusals to do so left Mass. Hall at a standstill.

Within the confines of his office in the early days of the controversy, Summers met regularly with at least four key staffers: A. Clayton Spencer, then associate vice president for higher education policy and arguably Summers’ closest adviser; Marc Goodheart, secretary to the Harvard Corporation, the University’s top governing board; Jason M. Solomon ’93-’95, then Summers’ chief of staff; and Lucie McNeil, then the president’s press secretary. (Solomon and McNeil both stepped down before the end of the school year, citing reasons unrelated to the controversy. Spencer has since been promoted to a newly created position, vice president for policy.) All of them, to varying degrees, urged Summers to capitulate, the sources said.

“The key words in Mass. Hall back then were: give it up,” said one person who was briefed on the discussions. “People weren’t disputing that Larry was being treated unfairly. He certainly was. But they were trying to tell him that that was irrelevant. He still had to apologize, and he still had to be sorry.”

SUPPORT FROM AFAR

By Thursday of that first week of troubles, Summers did say he was sorry, in a meeting with the Standing Committee on Women that night in the Humanities Center. Through a window, the meeting appeared tense but not hostile. At one point there was even laughter. Several professors who attended the meeting declined to discuss what was said but did confirm that Summers apologized, with no qualifications. In a brief interview after the meeting, Summers said he had told the committee: “I made a big mistake, and I was wrong.”

That was a marked shift from Summers’ public statements up until that point. In a letter to the Harvard community released on Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2005, the president wrote that he was “wrong to have spoken in a way that has resulted in an unintended signal of discouragement to talented girls and women.” But he did not say that he was wrong, period.

The wording of that letter, like his reply to the committee on Tuesday, had been carefully vetted by Summers and his staff in Mass. Hall, who reviewed and debated several drafts before it was released, according to two sources who were informed of the discussions in the president’s office at the time.

Though individual staffers had their own opinions as to the tone of Summers’ letter, most argued for an unambiguous apology. “Something along the lines of, ‘I’m sorry,’ without hedging it at all,” said one of the sources.

Summers’ reluctance to flatly apologize, even in the face of his staff’s recommendations, led many in Mass. Hall to believe that he was taking his cues from people outside the president’s office.

Those familiar with Summers’ strategy said he consulted regularly with Professor of Public Service David R. Gergen, a close friend of Summers from their time in Washington, where Gergen was a top adviser to President Clinton throughout his own scandals.

Gergen, according to two individuals who were told of his advice, urged Summers to be “presidential” and resist apologizing too extensively or too frequently. Through an assistant, Gergen declined to comment on his role. Other advisers to Summers named in this article also declined to comment or did not respond to phone messages and e-mails over the past several months.

In addition to Gergen, Summers also found support for his position from members of the Corporation, the only body on campus with the power to fire the president. Communicating by telephone in the first several days of the controversy, James R. Houghton ’56, senior fellow of the Corporation, told Summers that he should stand up to his critics on the Faculty and refuse to apologize, according to the two sources familiar with the discussions in Mass. Hall.

With the firm backing of the Corporation and similar encouragement from the veteran Gergen, Summers was in no rush to yield to the growing calls for a more thorough apology, the sources said. And he gave little to no consideration to the requests for a transcript of his remarks on women in science.

“This is a non-issue,” one alumni recalled Summers telling him at the end of January 2005.

But that was before the president came face-to-face with the Faculty.

—The second article in this two-part series will be published on Wednesday.
—Staff writer Zachary M. Seward can be reached at seward@fas.harvard.edu.