Framing a Legacy

Wanted: “A person of high intellectual distinction, with...a capacity to guide a complex institution through a time of significant change” to be the next president of Harvard University.

Six months after the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body, solicited names fitting this profile in 2000, University President Lawrence H. Summers was hired.

The Corporation had high expectations that the Washington-trained economist would use the visibility of the Harvard presidency to take the University in daring directions.

Five years later, Summers is leaving Mass. Hall, having lost the Corporation’s support after frequent tussles with a Faculty affronted by his leadership style.

But during his tenure, Summers for a time did as the Corporation had hoped, using his pulpit to extend Harvard’s international reach, push for a more rigorous undergraduate curriculum, and endorse a bolder vision for Allston development.

Summers’ roadmap for the University, professors and administrators say, will be completed by future Harvard presidents. In a way, Summers’ agenda is now the University’s.

In this selection of articles, The Crimson delves into the ways in which Summers has attempted to mold Harvardt, successfully and not.

Today, it remains unclear whether the University in a few years will resemble the draft Summers has sketched.

Instead, Summers’ audacious approach, far more than the specifics of his views, may be his greatest legacy to Harvard.

His approach has already laid the groundwork for a science-oriented, interdisciplinary campus in Allston and encouraged members of the Harvard College Curricular Review to adopt the same interdisciplinary approach to introductory undergraduate courses.

It was the president’s outspokenness that spurred even the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), which for the past year has defined itself in opposition to Summers, to assert itself in ways that will have a lasting influence on FAS-Mass. Hall power relations.

At his last study break with undergraduates on May 14, Summers’ parting words reflected his style­—and his mandate—as a University president.

“Be big,” Summers told the students.

Harvard as a whole seems to have heard Summers’ message.