Under the Lights: Summers Addresses National Audience

When former University President Neil L. Rudenstine first appeared on the cover of a national magazine, Newsweek, it was for taking a three-month hiatus in 1994 to recover from exhaustion.

University President Lawrence H. Summers had already graced the cover of Time when he was selected to succeed Rudenstine in March 2001.

And when The New York Times Magazine made Summers its cover profile last August, it was for his time on—not off—the job.

So it comes as no surprise that pieces on the former Secretary of the Treasury are slated to run in the pages of The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post this week alone.

In his first three years as Harvard’s 27th president, Summers has, by all accounts, fashioned himself as one of the most high-profile university presidents of the last half-century.

He has not hesitated to pound the bully pulpit on issues of importance to Harvard and higher education, from affirmative action to financial aid.

So far, the world is listening.

From phone calls with top Washington officials to front-page coverage in the national media, Summers has made waves, trading on the Harvard name to plug an agenda that he says will bolster the University’s standing and, in turn, his own public image.

“It’s sort of a judgment of how to best advance the interests of the University,” Summers says in an interview.

“I don’t think I’ve ever tried to speak out on issues that were apart from the University,” he adds, noting that he has attempted to “speak out quite consistently on issues in which there is a clear higher education nexus that seemed of national importance and that advances Harvard’s interests—and hopefully advances the country’s interests as well.”

In doing so, Summers has been increasingly careful to choose his battles from his presidential perch, speaking out in recent months on equal opportunity and financial aid in education and the importance of sciences and international awareness in a liberal arts education, while dodging more controversial political issues. In the process, he has meticulously cultivated his image as a leader on both national and educational issues.

Summers has also maintained ties to Washington, keeping up with his former colleagues from the Clinton administration. He is widely considered one of the top Democratic contenders to replace Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan upon his departure in 2006.

Summers will not comment on a return to Washington.

But for now, he is using his Washington connections and Washington-born fame to solidify the University’s role—and his own image—at the vanguard of higher education.

STEPPING TO THE PULPIT

Rudenstine was going to be the first president to make an official Harvard visit to Latin America. But when he took three months off to nurse himself back to health, the trip was cancelled.

That excursion, which had been planned for January 1995, did not materialize until March 2004, when Summers jetted off to Latin America for spring break.

In Santiago, Summers met with Chilean President Ricardo Lagos and members of his cabinet. He also addressed the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean on the importance of teaching and research at universities.

And in Sao Paulo, Summers met with former Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso and also delivered a major speech.

During a year in which he visited London and Davos, Switzerland, the Latin American trip highlighted the increasingly international role Summers has played as University president.

“I think that one of the really important transitions underway is towards becoming a more global university,” he said at the time. “Inevitably, that will mean that University leaders will travel more widely than they have in the past.”

He added that Harvard has a broader role to play in society, not only abroad, but in the United States as well.

This year, he put a little money where his mouth is, committing $2 million to addressing what he calls “our greatest domestic concern today”—inequality.

The initiative—which eliminated the student financial aid contribution for families with incomes under $40,000 and reduced it for families with incomes between $40,000 and $60,000—was rolled out to much fanfare at the annual conference of the American Council of Education in Miami this February.

“We want to send the strongest possible message that Harvard is open to talented students from all economic backgrounds,” Summers told the conference. “We are determined to change both the perception and the reality.”

After the speech, Summers launched an aggressive media campaign to publicize the initiative, going on NPR and speaking with a wide range of other media outlets. He has also touted the initiative and addressed the issue of economic inequality in countless speeches since February.

Summers had purchased a spate of positive publicity and a few more turns in the national media.

With affirmative action up for the first major challenge in its 25-year history, Summers co-wrote an op-ed in The New York Times with Tyler Professor of Constitutional Law Laurence H. Tribe ’62. Tribe also authored a friend-of-the-court brief—co-signed by seven other universities—trumpeting Harvard’s policy in urging the Court to uphold the University of Michigan’s policy.

Facing an across-the-board drop in graduate admissions from abroad this spring, Summers fired off public letters to Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge ’67, pressing them to address the bottleneck in student visas that was deterring applicants from coming to Harvard and other American schools.

Summers says “there was a very clear need to bring public pressure to bear” on visas because “it was an issue directly affecting Harvard’s competitiveness internationally.” He adds that he was “encouraged by those within the government” to push forward on the issue.

In a now-famous September 2002 morning prayers address, Summers said that divestment—a drive urging Harvard to disinvest from holdings in Israel because of alleged human rights violations—and similar movements singling out Israel were “anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent.” In that address, he expressed his concern from a very personal perspective, despite its strong impact on campus.

“I speak with you today not as president of the University but as a concerned member of our community,” he said.

Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, says Summers’ remarks stood out because despite his rhetoric, he was still a university president—the first such leader to address the divestment movement.

“It was unusual, because there seems to have been a reluctance around the university community for any condemnation of anti-Semitic behavior or behavior that would result in anti-Semitic impact,” Foxman says.

Summers’ remarks on divestment attracted attention in large part due to the criticism he drew, from faculty and a Crimson editorial, for stifling debate.

Nonetheless, Summers’ message reverberated far beyond the walls of Harvard Yard.

“It did focus attention on the subject to an extent it hadn’t been before—many more people found it outrageous,” Foxman says. “The fact that it was Harvard, the fact that it was the president, did at the end of the day focus the outside community’s attention on the issue.”

Even in Washington, when Summers talks, people listen.

The visa letter, for instance, landed Summers phone calls with Powell and Ridge.

Corporation member Robert D. Reischauer ’63 says Summers’ high profile and long-standing Washington relationships have benefited the University in allowing Summers better access to top government officials.

“That gives Harvard a much stronger voice on all sorts of matters,” says Reischauer, who directed the Congressional Budget Office from 1989 to 1995.

Barry Toiv, director of communications and public affairs for the Association of American Universities, says that while the leaders of most major universities would be heard by government officials, Summers’ preexisting relations are important.

“Of course it doesn’t hurt to be on a first name basis already with a lot of the people you might want to speak with,” he says.

Summers has remained prominent both because of who he is—Harvard’s president—and who he was—secretary of the Treasury. Both have drawn him considerable media attention.

“It’s difficult to tease out when he speaks and the press wants to talk to him on a follow-up whether it’s because of Harvard’s visibility or his or both combined,” says Vice President for Government, Community and Public Affairs Alan J. Stone. “Harvard in itself is a very special public relations case.”

Reischauer adds that his ties to the national press corps increases his public visibility when he speaks out.

The upshot has been a slew of fawning national media attention, from what Summers acknowledges was a flattering New York Times Magazine profile, lauding his bold activism on campus, to puff question-and-answer pieces in Time and The Wall Street Journal, to a spate of other positive stories on the curricular review and other Summers issues.

Toiv says Summers’ high profile is not historically unusual for a school like Harvard.

“He had a head start as a public figure, and that fits very well with the traditional role of Harvard presidents [who] have used the bully pulpit to speak out on issues relating to higher education as well as other important national issues,” Toiv says. “Harvard has had this traditional role because Harvard is Harvard.”

REPUDIATING RUDY?

Summers does not just present a marked contrast to the more internally-minded Rudenstine, but he also towers above most of his presidential peers in stature. While Rudenstine maintained a low profile on Mass. Ave., Summers developed a high profile on Pennsylvania Avenue.

“If you stopped random people on the street in Washington or in New York and asked who was the president of Harvard and who was the president of Stanford and Yale, I’m sure Larry’s name recognition would be 10 times any of the other presidents,” Reischauer says. “People know who he is, respect the job he did in Washington—even those who disagreed with it.”

Only a few university presidents—like Summers and Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger—have national name recognition.

And the fact that Summers and Bollinger were two of the four finalists in Harvard’s 2001 presidential search is no accident. Some members of the search committee had decided they wanted a president better suited to the limelight than Rudenstine and his peers.

“Some members of the [Harvard] Corporation during the search process thought that it would be a desirable feature, not a necessary one, if the president were to speak out, use the bully pulpit more than other presidents have,” says one well-informed administrator.

Robert E. Rubin ’60—a close Summers friend, his former boss at the Treasury and a Corporation member who has been appointed since Summers’s selection—says that he thinks Summers was chosen because as “Harvard faced a new century,” the Corporation wanted it to do so “with a president who was going to engage with the issues that Harvard has to deal with now.”

“They knew what they were getting,” the administrator says. “They expected Summers to be more outspoken than any other president.”

Georgetown Law Professor Daniel K. Tarullo, who has known Summers since their time on the Dukakis campaign and later as a colleague who advised former President Bill Clinton on economics, says that he “had assumed that the Corporation would not offer the presidency to Summers unless the Corporation had wanted a broad-ranging president who would be a leading figure in American education.”

“Why would they want a man who had expanded the scope of every job that he had been in...unless they wanted a president like that,” Tarullo says. “It seems that has been exactly what they have gotten.”

Professor of Economics Lawrence F. Katz notes that in recent times, the Harvard president’s role has fluctuated between public figure and internal administrator, noting the prominence of former University Presidents James B. Conant ’14 and Derek C. Bok compared with the relative obscurity of Nathan M. Pusey ’28 and Rudenstine. He added that the Corporation was aware of Summers’ “long history of being engaged with political issues” when they chose him.

“If you look at the history of Harvard, there has always been a movement back and forth between those who have been more internal and more fundraisers,” Katz says, noting that the selection committee had clearly swung back toward the public model of university president.

Reischauer said the feedback he’s heard has been “highly positive.”

“And almost always in the form, ‘well it’s about time,’” Reischauer says. “Not with respect to Larry or Harvard, but with respect to the great universities of America coming out of their shells.”

MANICURING THE IMAGE

When he arrived in Cambridge, Summers said he had learned in Washington to temper his public opinions.

“You learned very quickly that the right way to handle things was to speak with restraint,” Summers said in 2001. “Being provocative and interesting wasn’t always good.”

While Summers understood that being secretary of the Treasury involved constant media scrutiny, it’s taken some time for him to adjust to the critical eye that many have aimed him at Harvard, Reischauer says.

“When you’re new in a job, you have to figure out how to ride the horse. I think he’s adapted quite well,” he says. “I think he realized very quickly that it’s very hard just to speak to the Harvard community without there being someone who’s going to take interest in it in the national media.”

Early on in his tenure, Summers drew fire for two high-profile incidents: a reported tiff with former Fletcher University Professor Cornel R. West ’74 and his denouncement of the divestment movement.

Summers told the Wall Street Journal earlier this week that the divestment movement has fizzled since his morning prayers address.

“Over the last year and a half, since my speech, the divestment issue has faded away,” he said.

But Summers has tackled less controversial issues since the anti-Semitism flare-up, a trend he insists is entirely incidental.

At his morning prayers address this past September about the morality of economics, he noted that he intended to duck the hailstorm of controversy sparked by his previous morning prayers appearance.

“Whatever their merits, I think it fair to say that my observations [last year] did not go unnoticed,” he said. “I hope my remarks today will be cause for reflection but trust that that reflection will be rather more private and local than followed my remarks last year.”

Nonetheless, his outspokenness remains a difficult pill for many faculty to swallow.

“Even if he’s saying good things, it seems a little too much like Washington and playing to the media, and faculty just generally don’t like that, even if it’s serving good causes,” one professor says. “And here, some of the causes they don’t agree with.”

Summers says his criteria in picking his battles is to find issues of importance to higher education.

“With respect to other public controversies that have a partisan nature and do not have a nexus with the university, I don’t think it’s appropriate for university presidents to comment,” he says.

Summers is cautious about proselytizing even in the most informal arenas on campus—and even when his political views as a former cabinet member in a Democratic administration might seem relatively obvious, he consistently declines to comment on President Bush’s economic policy, only making occasional veiled references to his presumed disapproval.

He agreed to address a student’s question about his views on the war in Iraq only “off the record” at an open Mather House study break in April.

When asked about the relationship of the United States and the U.N. at a Winthrop House study break, Summers asked, “Is anyone covering this for The Crimson?” Only when the answer was “no” did he address the question, noting that over the past few years the United States has made large tactical errors that have resulted in losing the world’s sympathy gained after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a student who attended.

Reischauer says it’s tough to strike a balance between being outspoken and being radical.

“It would be unrealistic to say that there are no constraints on an individual in Larry’s position,” Reischauer says. “He is representing a great and diverse institution—that’s his day job, which you don’t want to jeopardize. At the same time you don’t want to forgo an opportunity to make the world a better place.”

Finding the right level of publicity is no easy task for a Harvard president, according to former Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles.

“The so-called ‘bully pulpit’ is a chain around the neck of any president,” said then-Dean Knowles upon Summers’ arrival in 2001. “Say too much, and you are excoriated for exploiting the Harvard name for a personal—or even an institutional—agenda. Say too little, and you’re accused of failing to use the opportunities that your position provides.”

Summers’ predecessor Rudenstine was assailed for his lack of presence with students. And he certainly kept a lower national profile than Summers, spending much of his time fundraising.

But Rudenstine insisted that it was the key to his internal University successes.

“Otherwise, you really begin to substitute communications and media relations for the true business of the institution,” he said as he left office. “That would be a disaster.”

Disaster or not, Summers has certainly built a “communications and media relations” machine at the University, expanding the role of the Office of News and Public Affairs and hiring—for the first time in Harvard’s history—a personal spokesperson.

In part, that’s because Summers brought nearly unmatched recognition into the job. In part, it’s because he’s the president of the world’s most famous university. (Summers gets 40 to 50 media requests each day, according to his handlers in the news office.)

But not least of all, it’s because he is closely manicuring his image as both economist and higher education advocate, while striving to pacify critics.

“He is just generally sensitive to his political image in the broader sense, not just with regard to Washington,” a well-informed administrator says. “The contrast with other presidents I’ve known is considerable—he’s very attentive to how he appears.”

Professor of the History of Science Everett I. Mendelsohn says Summers has tried to exert much more influence over Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby and Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 than his predecessors, noting that “they feel constraints from across the old Yard”—where University administration building Mass. Hall sits.

“Rudenstine gave University Hall [the Faculty and College administration building] a large degree of autonomy on how they handled most things,” he says. “I think Summers wants a lot more influence—I felt that on a number of occasions on the Faculty Council, when we would be told, directly or indirectly, that the president really did want something to happen.”

Mendelsohn adds that Summers refused a faculty request for addressing homeland security questions through an ad hoc committee and was similarly possessive of handling the response to visa questions.

“He wanted to handle it through the president’s office,” Mendelsohn says.

Dan Glickman, who directs the Institute of Politics and served in the Clinton cabinet with Summers, says his choice of topics has been reflective of this attention to image.

“He has picked and chosen his issues wisely—by and large he has enhanced his reputation at Harvard nationally and internationally,” Glickman says. “He has recognized that you have to be a good politician to be a good president.”

MR. SUMMERS GOES TO WASHINGTON

But the question is, in trying to be a good president, is he also trying to be a good politician?

Though Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., said in January that Summers had given advice to him during his primary campaign, Summers insists he’s avoided any active political role because the Harvard presidency should not be a partisan position.

Nonetheless, Summers remains close with many in Washington and is a frontrunner, under a Kerry administration, to replace Alan Greenspan when his tenure as Chairman of the Federal Reserve expires in 2006, according to several published reports.

Over the last year, Summers has co-chaired a highly-publicized Council on Foreign Relations task force with former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger ’50. They concluded their year-long work in March, when Summers traveled to D.C. to release the findings: the United States’ relationship with Europe is strained and both sides must work to bridge the gap. He has also begun to speak out on major economic issues separate from the academy, like the lecture he delivered to the Institute for International Economics on the problem of low American savings and his trip to Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum.

“He is a leading economist of his day, so it is quite natural for him to comment on issues relating to the world economy,” Katz says.

Rubin even says he should address more economic issues of public interest.

“I think it would be good for him to speak out from time to time, on economic issues,” Rubin says.

Summers says his public stances—frequently on national issues—do not represent political stances, instead marking important advocacy for higher education or areas of Summers’ academic expertise.

“I feel that having been here a little longer I have probably been more active in speaking on public issues kinds of broad public concern in higher education this year than in the first two years of my presidency,” he says.

But one administrator says that while he does not seem to be interested in Washington, he would strive to give off that appearance even if he were so inclined.

“He sees people, but he doesn’t give the impression as somebody who’s trying to keep his Washington contacts so that he might go back there,” the administrator says. “If he were doing this, he wouldn’t want people here to know—because Summers is himself aware of this speculation, he’s being very careful. If he had any intention or aspirations of that sort, he would not show it to anybody and go out of his way to avoid it.”

Reischauer says he thinks Summers seems to be having a “good time” as the president of Harvard, and while he’s sure Summers is on many insiders’ short lists to replace Greenspan, the issue has not been discussed by the Corporation.

“My view is he has a better job now—my guess is he feels that now,” Reischauer says. “This is a fellow who’s already been in the cabinet. A lot of people would argue that the job of Treasury secretary...is a lot more interesting than Chairman of the Fed.”

Rubin adds that he doesn’t think that Washington is “where his focus has been” recently.

While Katz notes that Summers, due to his economic preeminence, is an obvious candidate for Kerry to look to, he says he doesn’t believe Summers will take a political position.

“His very long-term future is at Harvard,” Katz says.

But Rubin also says that much lies ahead for Summers. “I think he’s got a lot left in him,” he says, adding that he has “no idea what [Summers] is going to do” after Harvard.

Summers declined to comment on whether he would accept another Washington job if offered it.

“I love my job and I love it more than I did two years ago,” he said.

Of course he does: he’s recast his image from the “bull in a China shop” of the Cornel West era to the educational visionary of today, gaining publicity and shedding critics along the way.

And that combination of shrewd self-projection and political endurance is exactly what makes him such an attractive candidate to be Chairman of the Fed.

—Staff writer Stephen M. Marks can be reached at marks@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Lauren A. E. Schuker can be reached at schuker@fas.harvard.edu.