Thanks for the memories...

I know that he has a university professorship lined up, but I can't imagine that's all President Summers has in mind for his future? Any ideas?

The thing about those results is the high percentage who chose "saddened".  Summers obviously did a bunch of stuff to get the undergraduates' support (financial aid, concentrating on us, etc), and seeing 16% more people choose "saddened" than choose "angry" makes the students seem more upset about a friend leaving than a furious at a coup by the faculty.

That is, it seems that we're not saying "What an injustice!  Summer's brilliant plans have been tossed aside!", but rather "oh...he was doing his best, and I wish he were still here."  Does this speak to our rooting for the underdog (which he sure seemed in this situation), our fondness for someone who came to our study breaks,  or something else like that (as opposed to us being unbiased observers and seeing something "wrong" occur?)?

Or am I barking up the wrong tree?  The large amount who were not angry, but "saddened" just struck me as sorta odd...

(...rereading that, hope it makes some sense...)

Hi everyone,

I'm pleased to release the results of my survey on President Summers' resignation.  If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Thanks again for your interest and participation, and please accept my apologies for the imperfect formatting below.

AMO

Poll Results ? Undergraduates Only

Respondent Information

 

Total Undergraduate Respondents:        535

 

Class Year

Freshmen:                                             19.4%

Sophomores:                                        28.7%

Juniors:                                                22.8%

Seniors:                                                29.1%

No Answer:                                          0%

 

Gender

Female:                                                51.6%

Male:                                                    47.5%

Transgender:                                         0.8%

Other:                                                   0.2%

No Answer:                                          0.9%

           

            Political Affiliation

Democrat:                                            55.4%

Republican:                                           13.9%

Somewhere between Democrat

                        and Republican:                        18.9%

Apathetic/Apolitical:                              2.4%

Undecided:                                           2.6%

Other:                                                   6.7%

 

Responses

 

Which of the following describes your reaction to President Summers? resignation?  (Mark as many choices as are applicable.)

 

A little bit surprised:                              45.6%

Saddened:                                            39.4%

Surprised by the timing:                          28.1%

Angry:                                                  23.5%

Relieved:                                              15.2%

Not surprised at all:                               11.4%

Completely shocked:                            9.8%

Ecstatic:                                                4.9%

Other:                                                   9.9%

 

 

Do you think Summers? resignation is a good thing or a bad thing for the long-term future of Harvard?

 

Bad thing:                                             42.6%

I?m ambivalent:                                     29.8%

Good thing:                                           24.6%

Other:                                                   3%

 

Prior to his resignation, would you have called yourself a ?supporter? of Summers?

 

Yes:                                                     44.4%

No:                                                      32.5%

I?m ambivalent:                                      21.6%

Other:                                                   1.5%

 

In your ideal world, who would replace Larry Summers as the next president of Harvard?  (The names below are just a random smattering of suggestions, many of which are beyond improbable, so feel free to use the ?other? box.)

 

Bill Clinton                                            17%

Elena Kagan                                         8.4%

Any Woman, Period                             7.2%

Robert Kirshner,                                   6.8%

Al Gore                                                5.8%

 

 

*Please note:  These results are incomplete.  For full results, please contact me at amolson@fas.harvard.edu.  Various subsets of the data, along with free response answers, may be available upon request.

 

After following coverage of Larry Summers' resignation in The Crimson, The New York Times, and other news outlets, I began to wonder:  So what DO students really think of Larry Summers' resignation?  To find some sort of answer, I set up a survey.  You can take it here:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=653951816083

Thanks!  The results will be released soon.

AMO

Nate, Tom, and Aaron think Larry Summers is a Huge... It's funny in a strange sorta way...

There have been a lot of different puported reasons for why Larry was kicked out of Mass Hall this week - his blunt management style, simmering anger over his comments on women, and a shortsighted faculty bent on his destruction.

But what about the trouble in Russia?

Greek and Latin professor Richard Thomas, the chairman of the classics department and a member of three key committees of the faculty of arts and sciences, agrees with Lewis's last point at least: "If I had been found liable for conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government, with the result that Harvard had to pay a substantial settlement, I can't imagine there would have been no consequences for me," Thomas tells [Institutional Investor].

Something tells me that the economics of the Shleifer case has at least some part in Larry's recent fall from grace.

I had an interesting conversation with someone from the LA Times this morning and one of things we were talking about was why students were so disproportionately in support of Summers relative to the Faculty.  Some great points have already been brought up on this blog directly related to this issue--my hope is that we can continue with that discussion and start a dialogue on the post-Summers world.

We all see that there is a significant divergence between the Faculty and the student body with respect to Summers' resignation.  Students are significantly more in support of the President than the Faculty and generally opposed to his resignation.  But why?

It's clearly not charm. 

I think students at Harvard are afraid that by removing Summers the Faculty will also erase the positive elements of his vision.  Particularly with respect to undergraduate life, I personally am worried that the focus will once again move away from the College.  While our graduate schools are wonderful, the College is this University's roots and Summers seemed to acknowledge that.

What will happen with him gone?  Will the College once again be forgotten?

I figured this blog is about Larry. So, I've created the Presidential Search Blog about the search for the 28th President of Harvard University. Please join and post any ideas/thoughts there. Of course the main question is who will be selected?

Summersville and Elise Stefanik get a shout out in a Slate article on Summers:

Summersville bills itself as an "open forum for debate on President Larry Summers," and poster Elise Stefanik has got little truck with Harvard's putsch professoriat: "The idea that faculty members can dictate the future of the management of Harvard University has now set the precedent that faculty members are responsible for the visioning, and execution of planning for all universities, as Harvard is, a model of modern education. That Summers was forced out by a minority of the greater university's faculty is not only a bad precedent for Harvard, but a dangerous precedent for educational institutions as a whole."

Here's the story...

Rumors are circulating that Bill Clinton may be asked to take over the Presidency of Harvard.  Oval office to Mass Hall.  I wonder who is worse, a Republican Senate or an angry Faculty.

(O'Connor has also been floated as a possibility)

a tribute to chace, who understands the personal significance, and is apparently incapable of being tagged on this site.  that said, i have decided to tag jeremiah instead.

A friend in a very sensitive position asked me to post this on the site anonymously...

Sent to my e-mail in response to my defense of Summers in the whole Russia investment case...

While i would contend that the Schleiffer case actually does constitute grounds for resignation on its own, and even if it seems like a mere blip on the radar to you, it is indicative of the backhanded way in which LHS has run mass hall since he came in 2001.  Do you know how long it takes to raise the money that harvard had to waste on covering Summers' best bud? and then for the president to give him a promotion, to reward him for his sleazy behavior?  Great moral standard to set for the students and great way to waste money that donors gave for the purposes of education. 

Other points that bear mentioning - the division of engineering and applied sciences' increasing lack of faith and trust in his presidency (so much for science being the future and his strong point...), major issues with fundraising (what has happened to the much vaunted capital campaign of a few years ago? delayed until a president who likes to interact with people is in place), and the alienation and subsequent loss of faculty (Cornel West...actually, basically the entire afro-am department) and staff (Jack Meyer) who have served the university so well.  Also, while i understand that a rallying cry these days seems to be "the faculty are crazy, the undergrads support him, this is just an FAS issue"... No offense, but the vast majority of undergrads have at most experienced four years of Harvard.  Many faculty have spent 20+ years of there life here.  Makes sense that they would have some pretty strong and developed opinions....Also, as for this just representing the FAS, it is the oldest part of harvard university and represents the highest number of professors and students.  FAS has always enjoyed a special position with regard to the university also, as it is the only school able to grant PhD's.  Furthermore, I would look to the School of Public Health and their troubled relationship with Summers as evidence that this is not a FAS-centric issue. 

Just one person's opinion (a well-written one, too)...thoughts??

WSJ: By "used to be," we mean the days before the faculty ran the academic asylum, the days when administrators, students and, yes, even the trustees also had a say in setting priorities and making decisions about how a great university is run.

Very good read...

Tomorrow's Summers article in the WSJ quotes an upset Professor Daniel Fisher who thinks Summers' resignation can't come soon enough. "Larry can do alot more damage in the next few months," complained Fisher, who would've preferred the Corporation to immediately appoint an interim president. 

That's just wrong. Whatever you feel about President Summers, he has handled today and his resignation with class and dignity. Professor Fisher is piling on and it's tactless and mean-spirited. He should apologize to President Summers.

Other interesting tidbit: Bob Rubin spent the weekend calling members of the Faculty from other schools urging them to be more active in their support of Summers. Something tells me that the Corporation's board is not entirely in unison on the current course and changes may come soon...

As we're discussing the surprising suddeness of Mr. Summers' departure and our new-found loss of respect for those members of the faculty that ousted him, I have to ask - who were the main players? I know that Theda Skocpol and Diana Eck were never fans. But their feminist antagonism failed to get him fired last year.

So the question remains - who succeeded in forcing Larry Summers out?

Many of the comments regarding the aftermath of Summers' resignation have focused upon the poor precedent that it sets for the role of the FAS faculty at Harvard. But as the leading educational institution in the world, Harvard's precedents reach farther than Harvard Yard.  The idea of the "tenured professor" was originally advanced to protect the faculty's academic freedom, but in this controversy, the ramifications of tenureship reach far beyond protection in academia.  The idea that faculty members can dictate the future of the management of Harvard University has now set the precedent that faculty members are responsible for the visioning, and execution of planning for all universities, as Harvard is, a model of modern education.  That Summers was forced out by a minority of the greater university's faculty is not only a bad precedent for Harvard, but a dangerous precedent for educational institutions as a whole.

 

On WHRB, Dershowitz called the Summers' resignation a "coup d' etat" by a small group of FAS faculty. He argued that Summers was widely supported by students and most of the broader University faculty.

Reposted from "Left Unsaid" (left.campustap.com)



So it?s official.  The big man has struck out. But he was over a long time ago.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom of my fellow students, I have to say that our university lost more than it gained under the Summers regime. From the women faculty to the Af-Am professors, from the dissenting voices to the popular deans, from the place of the arts to the role of the faculty in university affairs, Summers managed to shaft them all in 5 years.

But there was something else, too, that we were losing sight of. I'm not one to appeal to tradition, but some traditions are worth preserving. One of those is the spirit of free inquiry, integrity and independence on our fair campus.  Summers undercut the integrity of Harvard?s doings, the independence of its research, and the free speech of its faculty.

Harvard was starting to smell less like Veritas and more like Wall Street or Washington D.C., with an administration obsessed with our brand, our bottom line, and perhaps most of all, its own power. As one sophomore opined in today?s Crimson, ?I think he?s kind of running Harvard like a business?and I respect that.?  I don't. 

As an institution of higher learning, Harvard owes its excellence more to the daily work of our professors (not to mention students and staff) than the wheeling and dealing of our presidents. With the faculty pulling left and the administration pulling right, one was bound to pull the other down. I don't know about you, but I'm glad Summers went before the rest of the faculty did.

Besides, the guy needed a vacation. And now that our Summerstime is over, maybe we can actually get to work on the real issues confronting this university.