Summers’ Decision Held from Overseers

Members of the Board of Overseers, Harvard’s second-highest governing body, were kept in the dark about University President Lawrence H. Summers’ plans to step down until the day he announced his resignation, Board members said in interviews.

Summers has said he made his decision to resign on Wednesday, Feb. 15 and informed members of the Harvard Corporation, the University’s top governing board, that same day. But for five days thereafter, while Summers skied in Utah and the campus buzzed with speculation, members of the Board of Overseers received no official word from Harvard.

“I certainly had an inkling that it was possible, but I didn’t know when or whether it would happen,” said one overseer, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the situation.

The delay is just the latest indication of the power shift from the Overseers to the Corporation that has evolved over a century and a half.

The 30 Harvard alumni who sit on the Board of Overseers are responsible for confirming presidential appointments, but they played no official role in accepting Summers’ resignation.

And though they were once Harvard’s most powerful board, overseers contacted this weekend expressed no desire to have played a more prominent role in Summers’ departure.

“The Overseers were informed as much as the Overseers were supposed to be informed,” one Board member said.

“Decisions like this are best disseminated when they are given out broadly and at the same time,” said another overseer. “This isn’t the kind of thing where you can tell more than a few people and keep it quiet.”

Overseer Bruce M. Alberts ’60, a biochemistry and biophysics professor at the University of California at San Francisco, agreed.

“I found out when I got a call from [The New York Times], but I was phoned by a member of the Corporation shortly afterward,” Alberts wrote in an e-mail. “This did not disturb me, as early notification of the Overseers would have likely caused the story to leak to the press prematurely.”

The Overseers’ president, Patti B. Saris ’73, said that she was told last Monday afternoon about Summers’ intention to resign­—just a day before he made his plans public.

And incoming interim President Derek C. Bok said he did not find out until a few days before the official announcement that he would be temporarily returning to Mass. Hall.

Bok, who previously served as president from 1971 to 1991, wrote in an e-mail to The Crimson that he had “learned only last weekend that I would be serving as Interim President.”

He did not say when he had been first approached about taking the job.

In a sit-down interview on the day of his announcement, Summers said he had given advance notice of his resignation to select friends, colleagues, and family as well as the Corporation.

“There were several people that were involved, a small group that was involved over the weekend, people working on the necessary statements,” Summers said.

Two overseers contacted by The Crimson the night before the announcement said that they had not yet received word that Summers planned to resign.

The Wall Street Journal published a story online around 4 a.m. the following morning, revealing Summers’ intention to step down. Around 1 p.m. Tuesday, Summers and the Corporation released letters making the decision official.

Bok resigned his post as head of Common Cause, a nonprofit organization devoted to government accountability, two weeks ago, citing his age, 75, and saying that it was time for a new chair to bring “fresh energy and vision.”

Harvard spokesman John D. Longbrake declined to comment last night on when Bok and the Overseers were informed of Summers’ resignation.

According to the website of the Harvard News Office, the Board of Overseers is informed “about educational policies and practices of the University and provides advice to, and approves important actions of, the Corporation.” The Board and the Corporation are both charged with approving major teaching and administrative appointments at the University, according to the website.

Until 1865, the entire Massachusetts state senate sat as ex officio members of the Board of Overseers. But after the end of the Civil War, alumni elected the Board members. Charles W. Eliot, Class of 1853, who later served as Harvard’s president, described that change as a “happy liberation” of the University from state control.

Even if the Overseers don’t monitor the University as closely today as they did in the pre-Civil War era, members of the Board weren’t quite taken aback by Summers’ departure.

One overseer said, “There had been so much stuff going on that I think you’d have to have had your head in the sand to be completely surprised.”

—Staff writer Johannah S. Cornblatt contributed to the reporting of this article.

—Staff writer Daniel J. T. Schuker can be reached at dschuker@fas.harvard.edu.