Press Secretary for Summers to Leave

Less than two months into the worst public-relations disaster of his tenure, University President Lawrence H. Summers’ press secretary, Lucie McNeil, said yesterday she was leaving for a job outside the ivory tower.

McNeil, whose appointment in 2002 reflected a new era of interest in the Harvard presidency, said she was departing on her own accord and had begun planning to leave before Summers’ comments on women in science sparked a furor that threatened his job and drew national attention to the University.

Alan J. Stone, vice president for government, community, and public affairs, said McNeil would leave “in the next several weeks” to take a senior communications position at the National Geographic Society.

“I’m sorry to lose her,” Stone said, “but given her interest and past experience in this field, it wasn’t a huge surprise to me, and it had nothing to do with recent events.”

McNeil, 33, worked as a consultant to the World Wildlife Foundation in the year before she came to Harvard. Previously, she served in the press office of Tony Blair, the British prime minister.

In hiring the tenacious McNeil as his chief spokeswoman in late 2002, Summers established a position that had not existed under his predecessor, Neil L. Rudenstine, and the appointment was seen as recognition that Summers would enlarge the national profile of the Harvard presidency.

But the past two months have propelled Summers onto an entirely new plane of prominence and drawn an unprecedented—and clearly taxing—level of media attention to his office.

In a recent interview moderated by McNeil, Summers was asked if the media coverage had been a distraction.

“It is when we keep talking about it,” McNeil interjected. “I thought we were moving on.”

Stone said yesterday a search for McNeil’s replacement was already underway and might not be completed before her departure.

“I think the basic parameters of the job will remain the same,” Stone said, “although it will be affected, of course, by whom we find to replace Lucie.”

Summers’ chief of staff, Jason M. Solomon ’93-’95, said in an interview that other staffers would pick up the slack if a replacement for McNeil were not found before her departure.

“Not to diminish Lucie’s role at all, because she did a lot of great work and we are going to miss her, but we have a lot of great people in the news office and around the University who handle issues for us, and we’re going to draw on their talents and others,” Solomon said.

McNeil is officially the third-ranking communications official in the office of news and public affairs, but in practice she has split the number-two post with Joe Wrinn, the director of the news office who handles matters not directly related to Summers.

“It’s been a good division of labor between this office and Mass. Hall,” Wrinn said in an interview yesterday, “and I think a lot of good work has gotten done on both ends.”

In a statement relayed by his assistant, Summers said, “Lucie has done a great job for Harvard. We will miss her great spirit and skill, and I wish her well.”

Stone announced McNeil’s departure in a internal memorandum yesterday.

“Lucie has brought to us intense energy and skill in deftly handling the most complex communication challenges, a unique global perspective, and has enriched our community with her liveliness and humor,” he wrote.

—Staff writer Zachary M. Seward can be reached at seward@fas.harvard.edu.