Harvard may face poaching of staff
Summers firestorm spurring rival schools
Lawrence H. Summers, who already has to worry about recruiting more women to Harvard University and appeasing faculty members openly questioning whether he should remain president, has another growing problem: Rival universities are trying to use the crisis on campus to poach Harvard professors.
Since Summers's comments on women in science created a firestorm a month ago, other institutions have been calling and e-mailing Harvard professors to gauge their interest, several professors said. A few faculty members acknowledged they are seriously considering other opportunities.
''I was at Princeton last week, and both physics and biology faculty were asking who they could recruit from Harvard given all the troubles," said Harvard physics professor Daniel S. Fisher, who is himself pursuing possible jobs elsewhere.
The most famous precedent on campus for this sort of rethinking is the departure of professor Cornel West, who left Harvard's African-American studies program for Princeton University in 2002, after Summers challenged his work. West's former department has been unstable ever since -- when two African-American studies professors left last fall, it renewed thoughts of leaving among others.
''Day in, day out, year in, year out, all the good institutions in the country compete ferociously for the best faculty," headhunter John Isaacson said. He added he did not think that other schools would suddenly scour Harvard for people they had not heard of, but if they already had their eye on a particular hire, ''they now have a new arrow in the quiver."
Arthur Kleinman, chairman of the anthropology department, first raised his concern about attrition Tuesday at a contentious meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
''There are a number of people in my network at Harvard who have already gotten feelers from other universities within the last few weeks," Kleinman said in an interview later. ''There's a general sense, especially from some of the outstanding women we have, that the climate has been such that they are beginning to think about other offers."
As Summers's critics consider their options, his supporters are rallying around him. Two professors from economics, the president's department, said yesterday that they have at least 150 signatures from senior professors on a letter supporting Summers, although they have not identified the signatories.
''After frustrations are fully vented in coming days -- as they should be -- we believe it essential for the future of the University that President Summers have a chance to prove that he can be not only a highly effective and visionary president but also a responsive and collegial president," they wrote.
A group of undergraduates launched a website called studentsforlarry.org, while other students are planning an anti-Summers demonstration for Tuesday, when the president faces an emergency meeting with the faculty.
It seems unlikely there will be a vote of no confidence Tuesday because parliamentary rules would make it difficult to bring forward, several professors said. But a vote could be scheduled for the regular March faculty meeting.
Fisher, the physics professor who is thinking about leaving, said that 2½ years ago, he was excited about developments at Harvard that held the promise of more interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly bridging physical sciences and math with life sciences.
But Fisher, a leader in efforts to develop those links, became increasingly frustrated with the Summers administration and has become one of the president's sharpest critics.
''Several years of Summers' pushing for grandiose schemes, emphasis on hype over substance, and remarkably incompetent 'planning' by . . . task forces, have led to massive chaos and disillusionment," he wrote in an e-mail.
Fisher said he thinks Summers has been uninterested in true dialogue about the future of science at Harvard, even on the proposed new campus in Allston, which the president wants to focus on science. Fisher said that what passes for science planning under Summers is as phony as creationism passed off as science.
''The essential questions -- 'What are the goals and possibilities?' [and] 'How can we build on Harvard's unique strengths?' -- are deliberately squelched," he wrote in a separate e-mail.
Sociology chairwoman Mary Waters, another prominent critic of Summers, said that in recent weeks she has received e-mails from three other universities asking, ''Should we consider making you an offer?" One was from a school that has pursued her before, but the other inquiries were new, she said.
Waters, at Harvard for almost two decades, said, ''I don't want to leave at this point." She added that she hopes others do not leave, but ''in the last few days I've really started to worry about it," she said.
''If it becomes a fight where it's defenders of Larry vs. supporters of Larry, that could make your day-to-day life upsetting. If it deteriorates into name-calling, which I think it almost already has, that could upset faculty members to the extent that they might start thinking about whether this is someplace they want to stay."
Another senior professor, speaking on condition of anonymity, said ''there's a very good probability I'm going to leave." The professor added, ''If you had asked me this several years ago, I would have said: 'That's impossible. I love Harvard.' But things are just deteriorating further and further."
Harvard is considered by many to be the world's best university, and its tenured professors do not take the idea of leaving lightly. But in any given field, Harvard often competes neck and neck for top rankings with other institutions such as Princeton University, Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley, and MIT.
According to the student newspaper at Princeton, The Daily Princetonian, President Shirley M. Tilghman was asked at a recent faculty meeting to talk about the Summers controversy. Tilghman, a molecular biologist, said Princeton would welcome women seeking careers in the sciences, mathematics, and engineering: ''We're prepared to be the Ellis Island." 