Summers’ Presidency Stifled Progress at Harvard

To the editors:

Re: “Poll: By 3-1 Margin Undergraduates Say They Don’t Want Summers to Resign”

While I respect that many undergraduates support Larry Summers and even endorse his style of leadership, I wonder if the majority of those recently polled failed to call for his resignation because they are unaware of what the College was like prior to his assuming the presidency. I witnessed the nearly immediate, if often subtle, transformation of Harvard during Summers’ tenure. The hostility he engendered in the Faculty affected opportunities for undergraduates almost immediately as some professors made swift exits. Moreover, none of the College’s greatest accomplishments during the past five years—the creation of a new office to centralize responses to the campus sexual assault epidemic, the revamping of the core curriculum, and the first steps towards fairer wages for some campus workers—were the result of Summers’ efforts, and sometimes met with substantial resistance from him. I hope that in Summers’ absence, the Harvard community will be better able to strive for excellence and constant improvement in the kind of open and respectful environment that proved impossible to achieve under his leadership.

ELIZABETH F. JANIAK ’03
New York
February 21, 2006