Lawrence Summers and His Tough Questions

Harvard University's president, Lawrence H. Summers, likes to begin his talks with questions. Starting a guest lecture in an undergraduate economics class,

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he poses the following:

"You have a choice: Choice A is to take $5. Choice B is you get $6 as long as everyone chooses that option. Otherwise, you get zero." Mr. Summers is trying to illustrate theories of human behavior and economics.

As he expected, about 80 percent of the students nervously eyed their neighbors, and chose Option A, the sure thing. "If there is any doubt in your mind, you reason that other people have doubts in their minds, and you lose confidence that no one will make a mistake," explains Mr. Summers.

Outside this stuffy classroom, all over this campus, Mr. Summers is making a habit of not choosing the sure thing. In fact, his statements and actions since he took office in July suggest that he has little regard for conventional wisdom, or for what others might do.

Mr. Summers has caused one of the best-known scholars of African-American studies, Cornel West, to return to Princeton University. Among other things, Mr. West has accused Mr. Summers of not fully backing affirmative action. Indeed, only after repeated questioning for this story did Mr. Summers issue a statement backing affirmative action with clarity that is in line with the statements of his predecessors, Neil L. Rudenstine and Derek C. Bok. Mr. Summers has also roiled liberals by suggesting that the military, long sneered at by Harvard professors and students, does not get enough respect on campus.

Harvard, says Mr. Summers, needs to get back to basics.

His position: Full-time professors should be spending more time with their students. Papers and assignments should be graded more rigorously to make an A mean something. And young talent in the faculty should be nurtured and developed carefully, rather than being passed over at tenure-review time for a professor plucked from elsewhere. Mr. Summers also wants to set up more interdisciplinary study programs, and believes more students should be going overseas to study.

It is an agenda that nips in one way or another at many of the Crimson kingdoms. Whether it means questioning the stars of ethnic studies or the lack of patriotism on college campuses, it is an agenda that stands in sharp contrast to those of the presidents of other top universities. As a result, he is not only asking questions, but he is followed everywhere by them. Is he trying to clean house at Harvard? Can those at Harvard who disagree outlast him? Can he change the nature of the modern college president from institutional champion to institutional taskmaster? And, who, or what, is he going to go after next?

"He certainly seems to be asking hard questions that are out of the ordinary," says David W. Breneman, dean of the education school at the University of Virginia. "In almost every case, by the time someone becomes the president of a major university, they have had all of the sharp edges knocked off of them. That doesn't seem to be the case here."

Relentless and Freewheeling

Mr. Summers has been making waves at Harvard since he arrived as a graduate student in economics in 1975 and quickly established a reputation as a relentless, if unkempt and cocky, researcher. His freewheeling style engendered warm relations with those who studied with him. When he earned his doctorate in 1982, he was immediately offered tenure at Harvard. He was 28, one of the youngest people to ever be given tenure there.

He left Harvard for Washington in 1991, and rose through positions at the World Bank and in the Clinton administration to become secretary of the treasury. He was enshrined on the cover of Time magazine -- next to his predecessor at Treasury, Robert Rubin, and the Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan -- with the headline "The Committee to Save the World." He was considered such a brilliant young scholar that more than one person has suggested that if he hadn't gotten into government and administration, he would have won a Nobel by now.

An 'Activist' President

Despite all of his experience, he wasn't a conventional choice to become president. He had never been a college administrator, and he forced the search committee to wrestle with its decision by signaling from the beginning that he would be from a different mold.

"I made it clear during the search that while recognizing the role of fund raising and ceremonial leadership, I saw academic policy and intellectual leadership as central to the role of the president," says Mr. Summers.

In interviews, he calls himself an "activist," a "questioner" unwilling to accept the status quo. His style is often interpreted as confrontational. Mr. Summers says it is misunderstood.

Of a meeting with Mr. West in October, which set off their dispute and led Mr. West to accuse him of showing disrespect, Mr. Summers expresses regret if he caused offense. Mr. West has said that Mr. Summers berated him for recording a CD, and for missing classes while out supporting the presidential campaign of Bill Bradley. In an article slated for the June issue of Vanity Fair, Mr. West says Mr. Summers told him he would be personally monitoring his research to insure that it was up to Harvard standards.

Mr. Summers declines to discuss specifics of the meeting, but says, "I have never sought to interfere with any faculty member's academic freedom in any way. I certainly have encouraged excellence in scholarship and the upholding of high standards."

He makes it clear that as far as he is concerned, nothing and no one is above questioning.

"Challenging assumptions and raising questions is really what scholarship is all about," says Mr. Summers. "Skepticism is the most important thing that comes out of education, and the willingness to raise questions and the questioning of subjective dogma is central to intellectual life, and central to the contribution that intellectual life makes. So my approach here, and my approach in other things, is to ask questions. But asking questions is just that. Asking questions isn't necessarily being critical."

Asking questions and engaging in debates is the way that Mr. Summers educates himself, say those who have worked with him at Harvard and in government. One said he lacks the "veneer" typical of someone in a powerful position who must deal with others.

So, if Mr. Summers cuts off a presentation before it is half over, so be it. If he asks someone arguing a position, "OK, now tell me what the best argument is against your position," he does it, without apology. If he dispenses with a meeting's prologue, and says, "Tell me: What's the bottom line?," then you roll with it.

Mr. Summers wants and expects others to argue as passionately as he does. It is a byproduct, perhaps, of growing up the son of two economics professors, and the nephew of two others who won Nobel prizes in economics, Paul A. Samuelson and Kenneth J. Arrow. It was an atmosphere in which the best argument won.

"When I first met him, I misread him to be devaluing the arguments being made to him," says Daniel K. Tarullo, a former White House economics adviser and now a law professor at Georgetown University. "After getting to know him, I realized he was just gathering information. I think people misapprehend the style by which he tests himself." However, Mr. Summers has a curious inability at times to understand how he is coming off. He seems pained by his failure to patch things up with Mr. West, like a giant that cannot understand why an egg broke when all he was trying to do was keep it warm.

Pacing and Answering Questions

On the day he is guest lecturer in the economics class, Mr. Summers paces the stage of the lecture hall, stick of chalk in hand, trying to draw responses out of an apathetic mix of students. The black-and-white portraits of 31 former Harvard professors from the '50s and '60s stare down from a wall.

In the course of a 90-minute lecture, without notes, he will spill out a series of what seem to be disconnected analogies and anecdotes. He discusses the positives and negatives of short-term bonds, why he opposes fixed exchange rates, and why the bank buildings are always the spiffiest structures in small towns. His theme: that momentum is sustained in a marketplace not just by a succession of good news, but also by the appearance of confidence.

It is just past 10 a.m. The knot of Mr. Summers's tie is loose. His trouser cuffs have swallowed his black lace-ups. He galumphs across the stage, dragging his right leg, the toll from the bad knees he has developed playing tennis. He squints to see raised hands in the back of the room.

Mr. Summers has taught seven other classes like this during the academic year, and he looks to be having fun. The students brighten at some of his game-playing and his anecdotes, and several compliment his teaching ability after the class ends.

Oh, that it were this easy. Although Mr. Summers has the confidence, he hasn't been able to bring along the good news.

Many Harvard watchers are surprised by the number of controversies Mr. Summers has set off in such a short time, and some are worried about the impact on the university.

"A lot of alums I have talked to are ready for some good press," says Timothy P. McCarthy, a lecturer in history and literature as well as a permanent alumni representative of the Harvard College Class of 1993. "They are tired of the bad press. A lot of that bad press is about Larry Summers. I don't think he is the kind of person who is equipped to deal with all of the touchy, delicate issues that come up here. I don't think he can really succeed here unless he learns how to handle those things."

Some other faculty members, though, are completely satisfied with Mr. Summers, and his approach.

"He does ask direct questions. They are intelligent questions. They are the right questions," says Richard P. Chait, a professor of higher education in the Graduate School of Education, who has met with the president. "What I see is that he thinks like the economist he is. He is willing to take some risks and make trade-offs."

Many alumni also are happy with Mr. Summers. At a recent fund-raising event for Harvard's library system, an elderly potential donor stood and said, "I want to congratulate you on restoring the bully pulpit to the Harvard presidency." The comment was met with applause.

Professor Bradley S. Epps, who teaches Romance languages, says, like most professors, that he has not met Mr. Summers. He has watched him closely, and finds himself feeling ambivalent because of what he sees as wise decisions made by the president counterbalanced by foolish ones.

"My feeling is he is against the star system" in the faculty, says Mr. Epps. "I support that. The star system is killing the academy." But Mr. West was the wrong star to confront, says Mr. Epps. "It was devastating for African-American students and studies on this campus. He really put his foot in it, and sent the wrong message."

The secretary of the Black Student Association, Toussaint Losier, a sophomore, says, "It's important for black students to have that department here, and have the celebrity of that department attached to this university." Mr. Losier adds that the way Mr. Summers treated Mr. West "set a negative tone among a lot of students, especially students of color."

A Meeting Gone Awry

Mr. Summers is asked repeatedly about the meeting with Mr. West. It was not an attempt to single Mr. West out, he says. Mr. West is one of 17 university professors, the highest ranking a faculty member can achieve. University professors are free to set their own research agendas and to teach across disciplines. They report directly to the president. Mr. Summers plans to meet with each one individually, but Mr. West was one of the first, in part because he was just returning to campus following a yearlong sabbatical.

"The purpose and objective of these faculty meetings is to learn, to ask what they are doing, to understand why we do things the way we do, and to discuss the best ways to do things," says Mr. Summers. The meeting was contentious, by various accounts, but it wasn't until two months later that Mr. West made his complaints public.

Mr. Summers says now, "I regret any faculty member leaving a conversation feeling they are not respected. That is never my intent. I enjoy lively give-and-take with my colleagues, but I would never want a faculty member to leave one of our conversations feeling mistreated or misunderstood."

Many of the misunderstandings surrounding Mr. Summers apparently are a perception that he is staking out a departure from Harvard's embrace of affirmative action. For example, Mr. Rudenstine publicly disagreed with a 1996 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that overturned racial preferences in admissions at the University of Texas. He helped pen a statement in 1997 signed by the presidents of 61 other research institutions, supporting the practice of using race, gender, and ethnicity in admissions. It ran as a full-page advertisement in The New York Times. Mr. Bok co-wrote The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions (Princeton University Press, 1998), a leading defense of the practice.

Asked his position on affirmative action, Mr. Summers at first repeated statements he has made to many at Harvard about how he values "diversity." These statements have frustrated affirmative-action supporters looking for more. In a statement issued in response to a follow-up question for this article, however, he went well beyond supporting diversity.

"In the admissions context, I support the consideration of race as one among many factors that can properly be taken into account in a well-designed university admissions process, one that looks carefully at each individual in terms of his or her full range of experiences and qualities," he said. He also said he supports the 1997 statement co-written by Mr. Rudenstine. "I believe it is essential for us to create an ever more open and inclusive environment that draws on the widest possible range of talents," he said.

Mr. Summers often says that he will be judged by what he says, not what he does. The departure of Mr. West looks like an early defeat. Mr. Summers says that for two weeks before Mr. West announced his departure in early April, he was attempting to reach Mr. West to encourage him to stay. But Mr. West did not return his calls.

Behind the scenes, some members of Mr. Summers's senior staff are engaged in damage control. "We're trying to keep the faculty members here who are talking about leaving," says Dennis F. Thompson, a senior adviser to Mr. Summers and a professor of government. The provost, Steven E. Hyman, is in almost daily contact with another potential defector, Henry Louis Gates Jr., the chairman of the Afro-American-studies program and the architect of its rise to national prominence. He is rumored to be considering leaving for Princeton, too. "We're doing everything we can to make it irrational for him to leave," says Mr. Thompson.

In addition to Mr. West, two prominent scholars have announced plans to leave Harvard since December: K. Anthony Appiah, also in Afro-American studies, and Jeffrey D. Sachs, an economist who was given tenure at the same time as Mr. Summers and who had spent his entire academic career at Harvard. Neither cited Mr. Summers as a reason for his leaving, but Harvard realizes there is a perception that it is losing some of its stars.

The Summers Agenda

Mr. Summers's mind, meanwhile, has been on other issues.

When he began his presidency on July 1, he said he wanted simply to listen. He wanted to hear what students, faculty, and alumni thought would make Harvard a better place. The university is famously decentralized. Each of its 12 schools has its own fund-raising apparatus and sets its own budgets. Each has its own admissions office and different standards for giving students honors.

With its increasingly ceremonial functions and focus on fund raising, many observers believe there is little power left in the college presidency. But Mr. Summers does not agree. He says he is spending 15 percent or so of his time on fund raising and alumni relations, much less than Mr. Rudenstine, who typically spent half of his time during his 10-year tenure raising money.

One thing he is spending a lot of time on is appointments. Harvard's president appoints all the deans. By the end of his first year, Mr. Summers will get the chance to name three -- in the Graduate School of Education, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Harvard Divinity School. Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, president of the Spencer Foundation, agreed to become dean of the education school earlier this month, after months of personal cajoling by Mr. Summers. He promised her additional resources, and sweetened the deal by saying he wanted to see the school take a leadership role in national education reform.

And then, there is the responsibility that Mr. Summers relishes, perhaps, above all others: deciding who will get tenured appointments.

Harvard traditionally has an open-ended tenure-review process. Faculty can recommend anyone in the world whenever a tenured position opens up, with the idea of attracting only the very best scholars. To Mr. Summers, it is a process that has proven to be unfair to junior faculty members at Harvard. Although their research may be just beginning to bud, the papers they may have published form a short stack when compared with the books of other candidates who may be nearing the ends of their careers. Harvard's tenured faculty in arts and sciences, about 40 percent of all faculty members, has an average age of 55. Less than 10 percent of those tenured are younger than 40.

"I've encouraged departments to make sure they're focusing on anticipating future scholarly accomplishments rather than just rewarding past scholarly accomplishments, in particular, to make certain that we are giving maximum opportunity for Harvard junior faculty to be considered for, and in some cases promoted to, tenured positions," says Mr. Summers.

"We may make tweaks in the process," he says, to ensure that junior faculty members get more consideration. "That is something we are looking at."

Mr. Summers has rejected the recommendations that two 54-year-old scholars -- Karol Berger, a Stanford music historian, and Istvan Hont, a political theorist at the University of Cambridge -- be appointed. He declines to discuss his reasons. But he quickly points out that he has approved 15 other appointments since he began as president, including some "senior scholars." Harvard declined to provide a list of the persons whose tenure appointments have been approved, or their ages. The rejection rate he has followed is in line with the 15 percent or so of recommended appointments that have been turned down by Harvard presidents over the last 30 years.

Mr. Summers is working with a committee to overhaul the qualifications for graduating with honors. The Boston Globe has reported that 91 percent of Harvard seniors graduated last spring with honors. Harvard's undergraduate faculty were required in the fall to submit written rationales for their grading policies. Mr. Summers says he is hopeful that a new policy on grading and honors can be put to a vote of the faculty before the end of this academic year.

'Centralizing Policy'

"He has picked issues that demanded some sort of inter-university cooperation," says John B. Willett, one of the two acting deans at the Graduate School of Education. "I think he is interested in centralizing policy in certain areas."

There is much more of a feeling that the president has reasserted authority. Meetings of deans under Mr. Rudenstine were "very orchestrated," with a "show-and-tell quality," says one who attended them. Mr. Summers, by contrast, lays topics on the table, and encourages debate from all sides in a sort of free-for-all.

He is impatient with the slow progress of decision making. "The university is incapable of ordering blackboard erasers in quantities of more than six without a committee," he says. Some faculty members and students were dismayed that Mr. Summers released a new "interpretation" of a policy on student sit-ins without inviting comment from students and others. Under the new policy, students who are disruptive in taking over buildings will be suspended.

Since Mr. Summers became president, a university police officer has been stationed outside his office at Massachusetts Hall during business hours. A new door to the suite of offices, with windows, was installed to avoid the sort of onrush by students last April that allowed them to occupy Mr. Rudenstine's office and demand better pay for janitors.

On some other issues, particularly which schools will move to 100 acres that Harvard has acquired in Boston, Mr. Summers realizes he has to let the process grind along, while, quietly, he builds allies and pushes his agenda.

Among his allies is Jeremy R. Knowles, the dean of the faculty and arts and sciences, who says he admires Mr. Summers's ability to analyze situations and take decisive action.

"There are many concerns we share about quality, what the university should be doing, why we are here," says Mr. Knowles, who is stepping down at the end of this academic year, after 11 years as dean, to return to teaching.

But he has also seen people in meetings who were confounded by Mr. Summers's abruptness.

"Perhaps he engages a bit quickly, sometimes before the nuanced, if frustrating, complexity of university issues has been laid out," says Mr. Knowles. "He is impatient because his mind simply fizzes along faster than most mortals. If you're not spinning at quite as many rpm, you may not have such a good time."

There are, of course, many constituencies at Harvard that would like to see Mr. Summers fail. He has rubbed many the wrong way, none more notably than Mr. West. But they are likely to be disappointed. Mr. Summers has quickly been building a power base. Two seats have opened on the seven-member Harvard Corporation, the powerful governing board that is unusually small for a major university. His mentor at Treasury, Mr. Rubin, has just been appointed to one seat. Another seat opened when Herbert S. (Pug) Winokur Jr., a director at the Enron Corporation, resigned from the Harvard Corporation in March, releasing a statement that blurred who is whose boss. "I am concerned that my Enron involvement is in some ways diverting attention from your agenda for Harvard," he wrote to Mr. Summers, who holds a seat on the corporation himself.

He seems to be getting more comfortable in his role, but never varying too much from his old style: getting down to the dirty work of talking though issues. Ten hours after his morning economics lecture, he is at Leverett House, one of 12 residential houses on campus, fulfilling his pledge to visit every one and answer whatever questions might arise.

He is speaking in looping arcs and metaphors, comparing the university's built-in costs to string quartets, and inflated grades to the lost luster of the four-minute mile. His head in his hands, his shoes rubbing restlessly across the rug as he listened to a query, the collar tab of his white dress shirt sticking up like a dog ear, a greasy thumbprint smack dab in the middle of it, he parries with students deep into the night. He is looking for a good solid argument. He challenges them to challenge him.

• B.S., economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1975
• Ph.D., economics, Harvard University, 1982

• President, Harvard, July 2001-present
• Professor, Harvard, 1983-91
• Assistant professor and associate professor, MIT, 1979-82

• Secretary of the treasury, 1999-2001
• Deputy secretary of the treasury, 1995-99
• Undersecretary of the treasury for international affairs, 1993-95
• Vice president and chief economist of the World Bank, 1991-93

• John Bates Clark Medal, 1993, awarded every two years to an outstanding American economist younger than 40
• In 1987, he became the first social scientist to receive the National Science Foundation's Alan T. Waterman Award, created to honor outstanding American engineers and scientists.