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Harvard Rules: Lawrence Summers and the Battle for the World's Most Powerful University

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As a Harvard alum, I naturally tend to browse articles about politics at the university. So I was amazed by last Friday's front page article in The Wall Street Journal about the faculty revolt against the centralization of power under Harvard's president, Larry Summers. It seemed amazing that he could be so politically ham-fisted after his years spent in government. Richard Bradley's book is eye-opening: from Summers' unwillingness to attend Peter Gomes' service on the day he was installed as president (I remember Peter Gomes as a wonderful gentleman--the embodiment of Harvard ethics and culture--Larry Summers would have done well not to have missed it!) to his off-the-record smear of Professor Cornel West to the New York Times reporters ("What would you do if you had a professor with a sexual harassment problem?") Summers is a manifestation of inside-the-beltway power grabbing that ill-befits a Harvard president. The book is fast-paced and engrossing. I recommend it highly (and you might as well get it at Amazon because it isn't available at the Harvard Coop!)

Disclaimer: I am not a fan of Larry Summers. I didn't care for him when I was an intern at Treasury, and as an alum I really don't care for him as president of Harvard. But even I think this book is unfair to Summers and goes too far in trying to villify the man.

Bradely has written a book that is very easy to read and draws almost all of the issues enveloping Harvard in easy to digest, black-and-white dramas between Summers (always in the black hat) and various members of the faculty and student body (always portrayed sympatetically). This book makes no pretence of being objective or looking any further than skin-deep at the controversies that surrounded Summers before the most recent blow-up over his comments on women in science. Several chapters end with essentially the same line: by doing X, Summers had further consolidated his rule over the university. If all of this is true (it's not), Summers would be the absolute dictator of Harvard Yard by now.

In fact, what has been written here is basically an expanded, book-edition copy of the Harvard Crimson from 2000 to the present. There is little new in the book that readers of Harvard's student newspaper don't already know other than a few re-interviews that Richard Bradley has done with various personalities involved in the recent events at Harvard.

What's lost here is that what is going on at Harvard is a microcosm of what's going on at many other American universities, and that much of it isn't new. As far back as I can remember (and I come from a family of academics), students and faculty alike have hated their university presidents, viewing them as uninterested in academics or out of touch with their student bodies. As at Harvard, with the decibel level of campus politics higher today than at any time since the 1960s, there is a lot of talking (or complaining, depending on one's perspective) going on and less respect for opposing viewpoints. Harvard is hardly unique in this respect.

Bradely castigates Summers for his handling of several episodes with faculty (most noteably the Cornel West debacle) but misses the broader trend that acadmics as a whole have been getting into narrower and narrower specalties that prevent their work from being of much use to anyone. This doesn't mean that Summers was justified in how he treated West, who was (and is) a true educator, but it does deny this book some much-needed context.

Similarly, Bradley's comments on Summers' stress on achievement by students misses that the same line was toed by the genteel Neil Rudenstine, who once told the Crimson that 'students don't come to Harvard to have fun' when asked why the university maintains an academic schedule that places fall term finals immediately after winter break. This was a particularly poor-timed comment after a rash of student suicides on campus and reports that Harvard's student suicide rate was twice the national average.

Overall, only the most die-hard Summers haters will find anything valuable in Harvard Rules. Everyone else interested in the state of campus would be better of reading the Crimson from time to time.

This is an outstanding book. It covers the first three years of Larry Summers' Harvard presidency and really takes you inside the university. Harvard Rules treats the issues of higher education seriously, but it also conveys all the drama that goes on behind-the-scenes at Harvard. I particularly liked the way Bradley treated the people involved as characters, so that the book reads almost like a novel, which is not what you'd typically expect of a book about higher education. Like him or hate him, Larry Summers is a fascinating man, and this book provides grist for both sides of the mill. If you're interested in Harvard or higher education, this is a must read. But if you're interested in just a good read about ambition and power, I'd recommend Harvard Rules for that, too.

I read this book cover to cover in just over 3 days, which is very quick for me. I'm not sure what about the book hooked me. It might have been the tragicomic retelling of events at Harvard during the reign of Lawrence Summers, especially his encounters with students and faculty. Or it might have been the way the author sought to explain Summers' behavior as stemming from the lessons he learned serving in various government agencies. Or maybe it was the thoughtful profiles the author put forth of the various individuals who encountered Summers along the latter's career. Probably the biggest reason for me liking this book was how his profile of Lawrence Summers exemplifies all the traits, good and bad, of many that succeed in the 21st century. Emphasizing image as a way to divert peers away from substance, going thru the motions to appease stakeholders while reserving final decisions to one self, casting away the past to focus on the future, these and other traits characterize Lawrence Summers and others who reach the pinnacle of society. And this is probably the best reason to read this book; it shows what type of society America has become, who and what we've cast away and what he have gotten in return. All told, a great book and probably the best biography I have read in years.

This is one of the first examinations of the Summers presidency at Harvard. The book examines the results of Laurence Summers, former treasury secretary and brilliant economist, when he served as president of Harvard. Summers was known for daring to oppose that anti-Israel lobby at Harvard and divestment. He was known for his many verbal battles with such icons as Cornell West. He was also known for critiquing many of the political courses at Harvard that did not seek to educate but to indoctrinate. He was also criticized for accepting money for a sheikh connected to Islamism and allowing Harvard's name to be purchased by the United Arab Emirates, an apartheid state.

But for all his controversy he may have been the greatest president of Harvard in the last thirty years. This book is partially a critique and partially a discussion of the ins and outs of the controversies surrounding him. He was critiqued so much because he tried to rock the boat at Harvard and he dared to question whether it was still providing the best education. Although this book might be a little heavy handed in claiming that Harvard students are groomed to run the world, it is an interesting examination of the role of Summers at the prestigious University.

Seth J. Frantzman

If you want to understand what's behind the current faculty uprising at Harvard, this is a "must read" expose. The Harvard corporation is the powerful committee that selects the Harvard president in secret, and has minimal contact with the faculty. (Amazingly, Robert Rubin, a member of the Harvard corporation, was quoted last month as thinking that there was "no substantial faculty discontact" with Summers' leadership!) So if you're an alum, and thinking of becoming a donor, or if you are simply curious, this is the book to read. It's fast-paced and attention grabbing.

I didn't go to Harvard, but I've always been fascinated by the place-the money, the power of it. Plus, I kept hearing about the controversy that Harvard's president, Lawrence H. Summers, started recently, when he said that women lack the genetic ability to succeed in science and math. So I read Harvard Rules because it promised to explain what was really going on at Harvard-and it delivered. Harvard Rules is like a Bob Woodward book, except it takes place at Harvard instead of in the White House or Supreme Court. You get a you-are-there sense throughout, and by the end, you can completely understand why Summers' remarks have created such a firestorm. Summers is kind of like a Lyndon Johnson character-incredibly smart, power-hungry, with some good qualities as well as the ability to just make you shake your head in bewilderment. The book tells the story of how he became the president at Harvard and what the people who chose him wanted him to do-mainly, reverse the image of a weak president that Summers' predecessor was saddled with. So they chose Summers even though they knew that he was "a bull in a china shop." But it doesn't sound like they realized how much of a bull he is. Almost four years later, the place is in chaos, and it seems like there's a decent chance that Summers might be ousted. The timing of this book is perfect.

Harvard Rules is a great read-and you don't have to be interested in Harvard to find this book fascinating. You just have to like a good story.

I've never been a professor or a college administrator. But I've known several of them socially. To a person they have absolutely loathed their fellow professors and this was minor when compared to the abject hatred they have felt for the school administration.

The struggle going on at Harvard, as detailed in this book, has to be considered to be very amusing. Whatever an outsider president said or does at a place like Harvard is going to be completely picked apart by the staff, the press, the student body, and probably by the janitors who don't even speak English.

The universities are far more liberal than the rest of American society. They are the absolute temples of Political Correctness. When the president of Harvard said that perhaps the reason fewer women succeed in math and science may be due to gender differences, the world fell in.

Note he said "MAY" as in something to talk about, something to research, hopefully to reach a definitive conclusion. But no, the decisions are already made, there is no room for discussion, no need to do research. Here in the supposed center of intellectual freedom, open minded research, etc. etc. In the end, the president apologized, and only the resentment remains.

This book is an unauthorized investigation of the reign of the current president of Harvard. While I can't say that the book is an attack on him, it certainly isn't very sympathetic.

I bought Harvard Rules because my daughter is in high school and thinking of applying there, and after President Summers' comments about women and science, I wasn't so sure that was a good idea. Now, I'm even less sure. Harvard Rules is a fascinating investigation of what the author refers to as the world's most powerful university, and I think he makes a pretty good case for that. Bradley traces the story of how Larry Summers got chosen as president and what his mandate was to change the university. But he shows how Summers was a more difficult character than anyone had expected, and the resulting controversy repeatedly impeded his attempt to bend Harvard to his will. I never realized all the behind-the-scenes politicking that goes on at Harvard-fighting over money, promotions, prestige. This is a great story of the way that one of the most influential institutions in the entire world *really* works-and sometimes doesn't. Anyone whose kid is thinking about Harvard-or anyone thinking of applying there-should read this book.

While Bradley did undertake a significant amount of research in writing this book, he completely misses what's really going on at Harvard. Contrary to what he writes, and what his fans believe, Harvard is not a place in chaos or disorder. Though Larry Summers may be eccentric, and at some times offensive, he is leading the university through one of the most important periods of expansion and re-envisioning in its three-century history. Unlike his predecessors, and his peers at other top universities, Summers is bold, and possibly the best thing to happen to Harvard in decades. This is what Bradley misses completely, opting instead to focus on the impermanent neuroses and social quirks of its leader. Everyone wants to pull on the lion's tail, so this book is bound to have a loyal legion of followers who haven't even ever set foot on Harvard's campus (and certainly a few who regret they ever did set foot there). But for those who have spent any significant amount of time at the university, Bradley's errors are clear and they are egregious. Nevertheless, this an engaging piece of semi-fiction, but one that should be read alongside other books, interviews, and a healthy dose of time in the Yard.