What Happens to a Dean Deferred?

When outgoing Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby, a scholar of China, introduced Lawrence H. Summers at a meeting of alumni donors back in fall 2004, he offered a telling, if elaborate, metaphor for the University president’s relationship with the Faculty.

“Confucius asked, ‘How does one govern a family’—or, by extension, a university? And his answer was this, ‘You govern a family’—or a university—’as if you would cook a small fish. That is, very gently indeed,’” Kirby said, raising a few eyebrows in the audience.

“Here, I fear, I must break with Confucius,” the dean continued. “Sometimes we need to turn up the heat. Sometimes we need to flip that fish. Make sure it lands properly on the other side. Harvard has no better ambassador, no better thinker, no stronger leader and maybe no better cook. Join me in welcoming the president of Harvard, President Larry Summers.”

The flavor of Kirby’s analogy did not sit well with the few Faculty members who caught wind of it—thanks to an online video touted by the Development Office—and it seemed to confirm their early assessment of the dean: that he was appointed by Summers to extend the central administration’s influence over their school.

As Summers has gone about preparing his filet, even setting off small kitchen fires in the process, Kirby has found himself awkwardly caught between his boss and his Faculty, who have resolved to resist the president. The standoff ended over intersession, when the dean announced he would step down at the end of the academic year, but the tension that cost Kirby his job was four years in the making.

Even those with front-row seats to the divisions between Summers and Kirby differ in their portrayals of the factors that led to the dean’s resignation. Policy issues, ranging from the curricular review to Faculty finances to the central administration’s agenda to consolidate power over the University, sharpened tensions between the two. And Kirby’s silence in the face of his Faculty’s uprising last spring after Summers’ comments on women in science stretched those tensions further, some sources said.

But virtually all the sources for this article—most of whom insisted on anonymity given the administration’s reticence to address the reasons behind Kirby’s resignation publicly—brought up differences in personality between the dean and the president as a fundamental problem between the two men.

“OUR MILD-MANNERED DEAN”

The portrait of Kirby as polite and conciliatory—in opposition to the less soft-spoken president—has become so familiar to professors that it is something of a cliché these days. Florence Professor of Government Gary King called him “our mild-mannered dean” in a presentation to the full Faculty at its meeting in January.

Professors and administrators close to Kirby and Summers often point to those differences in personality when explaining the breakdown in the relationship between the leaders.

Kirby himself said, in an interview last week, that he and Summers “are very different people” with “different approaches” for achieving shared goals.

The dean doesn’t enjoy pushing back against the president’s initiatives to consolidate power over the Faculty in his Mass. Hall office, individuals inside and outside the Faculty said recently.

But Summers, some say, would rather argue than compromise.

According to an individual who has spoken to members of the Harvard Corporation, the University’s governing body, about Summers’ and Kirby’s relationship, the president has complained about the “yes-men” in University Hall.

“I do think that the characters of the two men (one who enjoys a vigorous intellectual debate on every subject, and one who prefers to avoid face-to-face conflict) are so different that a productive relationship was difficult,” a professor who knows both the dean and the president wrote in an e-mail.

STRUGGLES OVER REVIEW

Kirby’s difficulty working under Summers came into sharp relief for some professors who served on the curricular review’s Committee on General Education. At the meetings of the committee in fall 2004, which Kirby chaired and Summers attended as an ex officio member, the president “mistreated” the dean, according to one professor in attendance.

Summers was “extremely abrasive, challenging the dean’s authority, interrupting the dean, telling the dean he didn’t know how to run a meeting,” the professor said.

But other Faculty members disagreed with that professor’s characterization.

“I didn’t see Larry mistreat Bill at those meetings,” committee member Steven Pinker wrote in an e-mail. “That’s the way he treats everyone!”

Pinker, the Johnstone Family professor of psychology, added that Summers had not told Kirby that he did not know how to run a meeting—“at least not in any of the meetings that I attended (and I attended most of them).”

Summers eventually withdrew from the committee last spring after professors strongly criticized his interference in Faculty affairs.

But even now that the Gen Ed committee has released its final report, which calls for abolishing the Core Curriculum in favor of a set of broad distribution requirements, Summers is said to remain disappointed with the review’s outcome.

“The curricular review is far and away the greatest failure of Kirby’s tenure, in Summers’ mind,” said the individual who has spoken to members of the Corporation about the relationship between the dean and the president. Others close to Summers have echoed that assessment.

THE BLAME GAME

The Faculty’s looming budget deficit has also led Summers to gripe about Kirby’s leadership, according to several people close to the central administration.

In an interview last week, Summers said the Faculty “is in a sound financial condition.” He voiced confidence in the Faculty’s ability to pay for a number of expensive building projects and the rapid growth in the Faculty’s ranks.

But according to the person who has spoken to members of the Corporation, Summers faults Kirby for the Faculty’s budget deficits, projected to hit between $40 and $80 million this fiscal year. The president’s concerns about finances grew markedly in fiscal year 2004 when, the individual said, the Faculty’s fundraising fell well behind projections.

Combined with the slow pace of the curricular review and especially the delay-plagued Gen Ed report, the Faculty’s financial situation raised tensions between Summers and Kirby.

“At a certain point, there were just too many red flags,” the individual said. “Something was failing, and the blame fell on Kirby.”

Meanwhile, several professors said Summers was shifting the blame on Kirby for problems that were, at least in large part, of the president’s own making.

“There’s plenty of blame to go around,” one professor said.

But the Faculty’s dean for development, Scott Abell, cautioned against reading too much into the difficult relationship between Summers and Kirby as the primary cause for the dean’s resignation.

“The biggest driver was Bill sitting there and taking a look at all of the change going on in China and its rapidly increasing importance,” Abell said.

And, considering the challenges facing the dean of the Faculty in the coming years, Abell said, “there was just no way he would be able to continue his academic life at the level he really loves” if Kirby stayed on as dean.

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