Lawrence H. Summers at Harvard University: Growth Plans vs Controversies
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Code :LDS0012
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Region : USA |
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Summers’ Grand Vision for Harvard University After receiving a bachelor’s degree in science fromtheMassachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975, Summers joined as a doctoral student in Economics at HarvardUniversity.Concurrently, he taught atMassachusetts Institute of Technology, where he became assistant professor in 1979 and associate professor in 1982.He earned his Ph.D. in Economics in 1982. After working for a year inWashington as a domestic policy economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, Summers returned toHarvardUniversity as a professor of Economics in 1983, one of the youngest professors (he was then 28 years old) to assume a full-time job at the University. In 1991, he left Harvard University to serve as the vice president of development economics and chief economist of theWorld Bank, until 1993. From 1993 to 2001, Summers worked in various positions in the Department of the Treasury and eventually assumed the post of Secretary of the Treasury, the principal economic adviser to the then US President, Bill Clinton. In March 2001, Summers was named the 27th president of Harvard University and officially, he assumed the post in July 2001... Summers under Fire Amid the expansion plans for Harvard University, Summers got enmeshed in a number of controversies in the University. In October 2001, Summers was under fire for the comments he made during his meeting with Harvard African-American studies professor,CornelWest,who waswildly popular with Harvard students, both black andwhite. He had reportedly alleged CornelWest of deviating from his teaching duties, like recording a personal rap CD and writing non-academic books. Also,Summerswas reported to have criticised himof spendingmore time as a political adviser to the Senate rather than to his professional duties. He further pointed out thatCornelWest had been soft on grading and that he and others in HarvardUniversity’s Afro-American studies department, ofwhich Professor CornelWestwas a leading figure, bore a heavy responsibility for the severe grade inflation that plaguedHarvardCollege.17 Analysts observed that this was the first time in public memory that a Harvard president had singled out and challenged the quality of scholarship and dedication to teaching of a prominent Harvard academic... Growth Plans vs. Controversies Initially,Summers defended his comments and said that hewasmerely suggesting that the discrimination againstwomen and innate abilities ofwomen andmen in the sciences need further research, and apologised only for a ‘misunderstanding’.25 But after immense criticismfromthemedia and the academic community, he altered his previous remarks in an open letter that stated, “I did not say, and I do not believe, that girls are intellectually less able than boys, or that women lack the ability to succeed at the highest levels of science. As the careers of a greatmany distinguished women scientistsmake plain, the human potential to excel in science is not somehowthe province of one gender or another.”... |
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