In Letter, Harvard’s Top Lawyer Says Summers Stayed Clear of Shleifer Affair ‘From the Outset’ of Presidency

Harvard’s top lawyer wrote this week to Institutional Investor magazine protesting its portrayal of University President Lawrence H. Summers’ role in the fate of a close colleague implicated in a U.S. government lawsuit.

An article in the magazine’s January issue suggested that Summers’ friendship with Jones Professor of Economics Andrei Shleifer protected the professor—who led a controversial Harvard project to advise Russia in the 1990s—from consequences at Harvard.

Seized by some Faculty members to criticize Summers, the article, “How Harvard Lost Russia,” details the activities of the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID) in assisting the Russian government to privatize its economy.

The project, funded by the State Department, drew charges from the U.S. government that Shleifer violated conflict-of-interest policies by personally investing in Russia while running the program.

The article suggests that Summers shielded Shleifer from disciplinary action by the University, which paid $26.5 million to settle the lawsuit.

But in a brief letter dated Feb. 14, Vice President and General Counsel Robert W. Iuliano ’83 says the article does not make clear that Summers recused himself from the University’s decisions about the suit “from the outset of his presidency at Harvard.”

The letter also says Summers did not participate in “judgements regarding whether, when or how Harvard should review the conduct of employees involved in the HIID project.”

Shleifer, who was found liable by a federal court in 2004 for conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government, paid $2 million to settle his part in the suit.

The article’s author, investigative journalist David McClintick ’62, said yesterday that his article “speaks for itself.”

McClintick’s account has been circulated among some faculty and was mentioned at a Feb. 7 Faculty meeting where professors assailed Summers’ leadership.

—NICHOLAS M. CIARELLI