Another clash for Summers

With considerable fanfare, the Harvard School of Public Health announced in February 2004 that it had landed the largest grant in its history, $107 million from the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief to combat the epidemic in Africa.

The press release didn't say that the Public Health school had beaten out rivals at the Harvard Medical School for the swag, and it likewise failed to mention Harvard president Larry Summers, who first learned about the HSPH coup in the newspaper. That turned out to be a major political error, because, as one Harvard cynic notes, ''If anybody's going to cure AIDS in Africa, it's going to be Larry Summers."

Summers was not only surprised by the grant; he was also suspicious -- correctly, I would say -- that the Bush administration was indiscriminately shoveling out anti-AIDS money in an election year. Since then, for almost a year, Summers and his satraps at Massachusetts Hall have been working overtime to undermine the School's relief program and its principal investigator, Dr. Phyllis Kanki. First, Harvard asked her to co-manage the grant with a colleague from the medical school, Dr. Martin Hirsch, who has since resigned that role.

Then, last summer, Kanki was informed that her grant would be administered by an executive director, Mark Barnes, a New York-based health-care policy lawyer at Ropes & Gray. Barnes, who had administered an AIDS program for the city of New York, has also since resigned. A subsequent letter from HSPH dean Barry Bloom said Kanki and her colleagues could have ''no discussions with the US government" -- about their own grant! -- ''without prior discussion with the Executive Director."

Bloom also informed her that ''any complaints about the history of this grant should cease" -- referring to Kanki's outspoken opposition to the administration's attempt to wrest control of her PEPFAR program. ''The letter drives a stake in the heart of free speech and veritas," says Kanki's colleague, professor Walter Willett. ''I would hope it would be rescinded."

Here is the obvious question: Why in the world would Summers's administration attempt to downgrade Kanki's position, silence her, and possibly jeopardize the university's role in the high-profile, big-bucks global war against AIDS? And why would the administration go to war with a woman who has two advanced degrees, and who has managed an AIDS prevention initiative for the Gates Foundation, at a time when Summers has acknowledged that women at Harvard should expect better treatment? An ugly whispering campaign has suggested the program should be run by a ''real doctor"; one of Kanki's degrees is in veterinary medicine.

Taking the bullet for Summers is Harvard provost Steven Hyman, who has been negotiating with Kanki and her colleagues. While professing his admiration for Kanki, Hyman says Harvard unexpectedly found itself in charge of a massive clinical relief operation, and had every reason to appoint its own administrators for the grant. ''This is about a school taking on a project of unprecedented dimensions, and us putting the welfare of the people in Africa first," he says.

OK. But who is he to second-guess the State Department's decision to let Kanki manage her own grant? ''Her background isn't in running care, or clinical medicine, or running a complex NGO [nongovernmental organization]," he says. And what about the perception that Kanki is being singled out for mistreatment because she is a female scientist? ''Unfortunately, any time a woman at Harvard is involved in something like this, somebody can now make that representation," Hyman says. ''I do understand why the people at HSPH are upset."

That's putting it mildly. These issues and others have been the subject of two recent special faculty meetings at the School of Public Health. On its website, you can find a March 4 letter to Summers from the school's Faculty Council, noting ''that the words and actions of your Administration have not always been consistent with the values that have made Harvard an admired institution worldwide." The letter has so far gone unanswered.

Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com.