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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Introduction: “We must take full advantage of the physical opportunity across the river in Allston, where there is room ‘to build a campus several times larger than this one’,”4 said Lawrence H. Summers, during his appointment as the 27th president of HarvardUniversity in 2001. Since he became the president of Harvard University, LawrenceH. Summers (Summers) had devised an extraordinary expansion plan for the University. Some of his goals included: a long-overdue improvement in the curriculum of undergraduate programme, increasing the role Harvard played in science and engineering and a huge expansion of the campus acrossAllston.5 In early 2005, in themidst of the expansion plans, Summers got enmeshed in a highly publicised battle with Harvard’s ‘powerful’ Faculty of Arts & Sciences, after he remarked in National Bureau of EconomicsResearch (NBER) conference thatwomen hadlessinnate abilityto performin scienceandmathematics thanmen. AlthoughSummers repeatedly apologised for his comments later, critics commented thatSummers’remarkswere ‘wildly inappropriate’ coming fromthe head of the nation’s oldestUniversity.Meanwhile, some facultymembers proclaimed a “lack of confidence” in Summers’management and leadership style, and his controversial statements about the innate abilities of women in science. InMarch 2005, in a secret ballot, Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences approved amotion (professors voted 218 to 185 in favour of the motion) that mentioned, “The faculty lacks confidence in the leadership of Lawrence H. Summers”. Themotion, which declared that the Faculty of Arts and Sciences lacked confidence in president Summers,was first of its kind in the nearly 400-year history ofHarvardUniversity. By all accounts, resuming the expansion plans would be difficult in the light of themotion approved by Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which was considered to be a strong lobby in the University. |
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