THE RESIGNATION OF HARVARD PRESIDENT
Larry Summers summons up the same quotation that
TIME used in writing about the early retirement of another president, Nathan Pusey, in 1970: " 'If any man wishes to be humbled and mortified,' mused [Harvard] President Edward Holyoke on his deathbed in 1769, 'let him become the president of Harvard College.' " Some highlights from our coverage of Harvard over the years:
Harvard has a race problem. ... And she will go on having a race problem for some generations to come. There are groups at Harvard, as at Columbia and Chicago and—to a less extent—at Yale and Princeton which are not harmonious. The result is friction and ill feeling which cannot help but have unfortunate effects.
From Triumph of Platitude
Apr. 21, 1923
Harvard v. Yale is not the oldest football rivalry in the U. S. nor the most important. But few footballers would deny that its tradition outweighs that of any other game.
From Football
Nov. 23, 1931
A milestone more significant for Harvard was reached last year when Abbott Lawrence Lowell, aged 76, stepped down from his 24-year presidency. And a more fruitful time for educational stock-taking arrived last week when James Bryant Conant, the 40-year-old chemistry professor who succeeded to the big paneled office in University Hall, revealed in his first annual report to its Board of Overseers the new course which Harvard hopes to steer through the years ahead.
From Chemist at Cambridge
Feb. 5, 1934
Promptly at 9:30 a. m. a bugle sounded through the rainswept yard. Alumni rallied to 56 flags flying over their respective Class assemblies, began to march four abreast to the exposed and sopping seats of the Tercentenary Theatre. ... Also on hand was a Federal Commission authorized by Public Resolution No. 88 of the last Congress. At its head, in silk hat and cutaway, Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the Class of 1904 walked through the rain, seated himself in a red velvet chair on President Conant's right.
From Cambridge Birthday
Sep. 28, 1936
Lowell—who preferred being called 'Mr.' rather than 'President'—began at once to remodel Eliot's Harvard. Eliot had built up a distinguished faculty but had let the undergraduate college slump. Under Eliot's famous system of free electives, many Harvard undergraduates chose snap courses, thought any grade higher than C ungentlemanly. Snorted Lowell: 'The B.S. degree is a certificate not of a man's mastery of science but of his ignorance of Latin.'
From Mr. Lowell
Jan. 18, 1943
Mark II, the first calculator built at Harvard for the Navy, is ten times as fast as Bessie. Mark III is 25 times as fast as Mark II and 250 times as fast as Bessie. Machines now abuilding will be faster still. Says Professor Aiken, head of Harvard's Computation Laboratory: 'We'll have to think up bigger problems if we want to keep them busy.'
From The Thinking Machine
Jan. 23, 1950
Throughout its entire history, Harvard has followed the pioneer's way: it is the most diversified, individualistic and nonconformist of U.S. universities. When Nathan Pusey became its president, he was charged with the task of keeping it so—'to pursue, with unremitting vigilance, inquiry into fundamental truths in every field of knowledge, no matter where the trail leads, no matter how unpopular the result.'
From Unconquered Frontier
Mar. 1, 1954
After living together for 25 years, Harvard and Radcliffe have agreed to merge officially. No longer will Cliffies merely attend Harvard classes, earn Harvard degrees and acquire Harvard husbands.
From Can Hip Harvard Hold That Line?
Mar. 14, 1969
It was a shock—to faculty, students and administration alike—that for a time the 'Harvard way' had failed. No matter how soon the present crisis is resolved, the great temple of learning on the Charles will never be quite the same.
From Harvard and Beyond: The University Under Siege
Apr. 18, 1969
A splendid fundraiser, Pusey tripled Harvard's endowment, more than doubled its endowed chairs, quadrupled its budget and put up 50 buildings. But during his 17-year incumbency, a decade of noninvolvement on campus merged with a decade of rage and reform, and in the end, much at Harvard changed faster than its 24th president.
From The President Bows Out
Mar. 2, 1970
For two hours, the overseers debated whether Bok was really the man to handle Harvard's myriad problems, from troubled black students to finances and the demanding science faculties. The choice was not unanimous. ... Harvard insiders are now convinced that Bok is a first-rate choice. His flaw, if it can be called that, is a record of such quiet accomplishment that his real mettle seems untested.
From Harvard's Quiet Man
Jan. 25, 1971
The Harvard that is being celebrated this week was essentially the creation of Charles William Eliot about a century ago.... Overall, in his 40-year reign, Eliot raised the university's endowment from $2 million to $22 million, its faculty from 45 to 194, its student body from 500 to 2,000. And he brought Harvard such a quality of leadership that everything he did influenced other colleges. When the aging president strolled & across his Yard, said young Walter Lippmann, he looked 'a little bit like God walking around.'
From A "Schoale" and How It Grew
By Otto Friedrich
Sep. 8, 1986
Harvard, under its patrician president Derek Bok, remains the gauge against which others are measured. As the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, president of Notre Dame, puts it, Harvard is 'the standard bearer and symbol of excellence.'
From Happy Birthday, Fair Harvard!
By Ezra Bowen
Sep. 8, 1986
Bok has paid primary attention to Harvard's intellectual and ethical goals, not only of the college but particularly of the business and law schools. His concerns have reverberated far beyond Cambridge. 'The president of Harvard is de facto the educational leader of the country,' says another college president. 'He raises the issues first, and then they become the agenda.'
From Setting All the Parts in Harmony
By Otto Friedrich
Sep. 8, 1986
The Afro-American studies department that Henry Louis Gates Jr. is assembling at Harvard is the most glittering display of black brainpower since W.E.B. Du Bois studied alone at the university a century ago.
From The Black Brain Trust
By Jack E. White
Feb. 26, 1996
Undergraduates call it 'dropping the H-bomb' when they reveal to a new acquaintance that they go to Harvard. That's because the Ivy League university's name invariably elicits a response to what administrators there call 'the best brand in higher education.' This month, however, the Harvard brand is taking heavy fire, thanks to the man who is supposed to be its most vigilant guardian, university president Larry Summers.
From Harvard's Crimson Face
By Rebecca Winters
Jan. 31, 2005
There was something self-destructive about Harvard University President Larry Summers' speech on gender disparities in January.... The comments about aptitude in particular lingered, like food poisoning, long after the conference ended.
From Who Says a Woman Can't Be Einstein
By Amanda Ripley
Mar. 7, 2005
Harvard's faculty approved a vote of no confidence in President Larry Summers last week, following his controversial remarks about why women are underrepresented in the fields of math and science.
From Embattled Ivy
By Jeremy Caplan
Mar. 28, 2005
So was it roughing up the faculty or glossing over fraud that did Summers in? The Harvard Corporation, the seven-member board that steers the university, isn't commenting beyond an announcement that they accepted the resignation "with regret." But Summers has been remarkably resilient through other flashes of faculty anger, even last year's no-confidence vote on the heels of the women-in-science imbroglio. And he came into the job with a reputation as a blunt talker.
From Why Harvard's Summers Flunked the Presidency
By Nathan Thornburgh
Feb. 21, 2006
Summers' view that he had inherited a university with urgent problems is in part a way of justifying the highly undiplomatic way he conducted himself as president, but he's hardly alone in his view. His temporary successor, former Harvard president Derek Bok, is about as different from Summers as it is possible to get.... But Bok seems equally gloomy about the state of Harvard and universities in general.
From What Harvard Taught Larry Summers
By Nicholas Lemann
Mar. 6, 2006
By slamming its gates to early comers, the nation's top university focused the nation's attention on a trend that has alarmed some educators: students applying for college earlier and earlier and earlier. But all signs say that schoolsÑat least the majority of schools that are not super elite Ñwon't be following Harvard's lead anytime soon.
From When Early College Admissions Go Extreme
By Lisa Takeuchi Cullen
Sep. 13, 2006
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