Summers Quiet on Future Plans

The Class of 2006 might not be the only hot commodity on the job market this summer.

University President Lawrence H. Summers will step down from his post on June 30—and the offers are already rolling in.

“A lot of people have called with various ideas for things that I might do,” he said in an interview yesterday afternoon. “I’m thinking about all that, but at this point, my primary focus is on my job as Harvard president.”

Summers declined to comment on the kinds of job offers he has received.

When he resigned on Feb. 21, Summers announced that he would spend a year on sabbatical before returning to Harvard as a University professor in the fall of 2007. He said yesterday he expects that his wife of four months, Professor of English Elisa New, will take a leave from the English Department to join him on his year outside the Ivory Tower.

Summers said he intends to return to Harvard academia at the end of his sabbatical, but yesterday, he hesitated to offer an iron-clad commitment.

“Never rule anything out,” he said.

ON THE SIDELINES

Formerly a lightning rod for controversy, Summers now finds himself on the outside of another tempest: some critics have blasted a paper co-authored by Kennedy School of Government Academic Dean Stephen M. Walt as anti-Semitic. The paper contends that an “Israel Lobby” of academia, the media, and government have hijacked U,S, foreign policy to pursue pro-Israel interests.

Summers’ defended the Kennedy School’s handling of the situation—the school has not removed the paper from its website and has allowed Frankfurter Professor of Law Alan M. Dershowitz to post a critical response. But Summers would not offer an opinion on the paper’s merits.

“It seems to me that on academic freedom grounds it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to try to pass judgment on scholarly papers outside my field,” he said. “Obviously, the paper has aroused some strong feelings in a number of quarters. That’s what happens when academics write articles on controversial subjects.”

When asked whether he had received any complaints from donors as a result of the paper, Summers declined to comment further.

BOK TO BUSINESS

In the weeks since his resignation, Summers said he has been in “frequent touch” with incoming Interim President Derek C. Bok, who recently moved into a Loeb House office. Summers declined to discuss the content of those meetings with Bok, but he said the two had discussed a “whole range of issues at the University.”

The president, who returned from a week-long trip to India at the end of last month, said he has focused his attention on developing the University’s master plan for its expansion into Allston, filling the deanships of Harvard Business School and the Graduate School of Education, and meeting with alumni and donors in New York. He’s also tying up some loose ends at the University to ensure “a smooth transition” and to leave his successors with “as clear a sense of where things are—where, at least, I think they should go.”

Summers declined to discuss who in Massachusetts Hall would be involved in the transition, and he added that he “wouldn’t be surprised” if the office saw turnover after his departure.

Is Summers paying attention to the search for his successor?

“Not very closely,” he said.

Summers—whose tenure is set to be the shortest of any Harvard president since the Civil War—said he is most proud of his efforts to revamp undergraduate education, boost science and interdisciplinary initiatives, and expand financial aid to more students. But he was reluctant to predict his legacy as Harvard’s 27th president.

“I think it’s for others to judge,” he said.

—Staff writer Nicholas M. Ciarelli can be reached at ciarelli@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Javier C. Hernandez can be reached at jhernand@fas.harvard.edu.