In Motion, Prof Looks to Corp

A new motion on the agenda for the Feb. 28 meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) calls on the Harvard Corporation, the only body with the power to fire University President Lawrence H. Summers, to intervene in the escalating battle between professors and the central administration.

While past Faculty motions have expressed professors’ displeasure with the president, the new resolution reflects rising frustration with the Corporation’s inaction in response to the Summers storm.

Passage of the motion would put even more pressure on the outwardly silent and secretive governing body that is slowly beginning to show signs of increased interest in the University’s latest crisis of governance.

The resolution, submitted by Professor of Physics and Applied Physics Daniel S. Fisher and obtained by The Crimson last night, does not mention the words “resign” or “dismiss.” But its text clearly conveys dissatisfaction with the current state of the central administration.

“This Faculty respectfully adjures the Governing Boards, especially the Corporation, to re-establish in collaboration with the Faculty effective governance and leadership of Harvard University,” the motion reads.

Fisher’s motion comes just days after Weary Professor of German and Comparative Literature Judith Ryan put a resolution on the same Feb. 28 docket asking the Faculty to vote on whether or not it “continues to lack confidence in the leadership of President Lawrence H. Summers.” Summers lost a similar vote 218–185 last March.

Fisher, who last February became the first Faculty member to publicly call on Summers to resign, has long been an outspoken critic of the president’s leadership. He told the Yale Daily News that “Harvard is becoming a dictatorship,” and he told both the Yale student paper and the Boston Globe that he was looking for jobs outside of Harvard.

Recently, he has expanded his criticism to also target the Corporation for failing to remove Summers from the presidency.

In a question rhetorically addressed to the Corporation, Fisher asked at the Faculty meeting on Tuesday, “How, after everything that you have learned over the past year...can you have collectively failed to come to the conclusion that Harvard would be far better off with a new president?”

Fisher declined to comment last night. Summers’ spokesman, John Longbrake, also declined to comment. Attempts to contact Corporation members by phone last night were unsuccessful.

According to a preliminary agenda, the Feb. 28 meeting will be moved from the standard meeting room in University Hall to Sanders Theatre, one of the largest venues available on Harvard’s campus—signaling that administrators expect a big turnout for the votes.

MEETINGS BEHIND THE SCENES

Corporation members began meeting with professors after the crisis of governance last spring semester, initiating a historically nonexistent relationship between Faculty members and the University’s highest governing board.

“Over the years, there has been no tradition of the Corporation engaging in meetings of the Faculty,” Professor of the History of Science Everett M. Mendelsohn said. But last winter, he said, two members of the Corporation met with six representatives of the Faculty Council on two occasions—once before and once after the March vote of no confidence.

Professors, keen on retaining their increased access to the Corporation, have been guarded in discussing their conversations with its members. But in recent interviews, professors have pointed out a rising level of interest among some Corporation members in the crisis brewing on campus.

“In the past there’s been a confidence on the part of the Faculty that the Corporation acted with the wisdom and with the best interests of the University, which generally coincide with the best interests of the Faculty,” said Classics Department Chair Richard F. Thomas, also a member of the Faculty Council. “And the fact that there has been contact recently suggests that there has been a breakdown in some of those issues of governance.”

Thomas and three of his colleagues on the Council—the Faculty’s elected 19-member governing body—met with three Corporation members last Monday, a day before the Faculty meeting. Council members were told that James R. Houghton ’58, Nannerl O. Keohane, and Robert D. Reischauer were at the meeting with four Council members last week, according to J.D. Connor ’92, an assistant professor of visual and environmental studies and of English who serves on the Faculty Council.

Corporation members have also been meeting with professors not on the Council.

History Department Chair Andrew D. Gordon, who is not a Council member, said that he has met with Corporation members on three occasions since last March. Gordon, who is a coordinator of the Caucus of Chairs, an independent and informal group of department chairs, said two of the meetings were also attended by other Caucus members. The third, he said, was an individual meeting with a Corporation member.

“Members of the corporation are clearly concerned about the sentiment of the faculty, as they should be,” Gordon wrote in an e-mail.

‘HUSH-HUSH’

With professors as well as Corporation members maintaining a strict silence on the substance of their conversations, the board’s actual views remain shrouded in secrecy and speculation.

But a long-time Harvard observer said that even if the Corporation were to decide to push Summers out, their involvement in the president’s resignation might not become publicly known.

Peter J. Gomes, the Plummer professor of Christian morals and an expert on Harvard’s history, said Summers’ firing, if it happened, would be a “very hush-hush sort of thing.”

“No one wants it said that the Corporation ever fired a president of the University,” said Gomes, who teaches a course on the history of Harvard and its presidents.

—William C. Marra and Daniel J. T. Schuker contributed to the reporting of this story. —Staff writer Evan H. Jacobs can be reached at ehjacobs@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Anton S. Troianovski can be reached at atroian@fas.harvard.edu.