Harvard corporation member resigns

One of the seven members of Harvard University's powerful governing corporation, Conrad K. Harper, said yesterday that he is resigning because of differences with the university's controversial president, Lawrence H. Summers.

''I concluded I could no longer support president Summers," Harper said in a brief phone interview.

Harper, an African-American lawyer who was the only person of color on the corporation, refused to say anything more about his concerns about Summers's leadership or what specifically prompted his departure. He said he laid out his reasons in a July 14 resignation letter to Summers. He said he was not opposed to the letter being released, but left the decision with Harvard, which refused, citing the confidentiality of corporation discussions.

Harvard's board steadfastly supported Summers this winter and spring, as the campus was gripped by stormy debates over Summers's four years as president and his January remarks that there may be differences in men's and women's ''intrinsic aptitude" for science. Harvard's biggest school, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, voted ''no confidence" in Summers in March.

''We know him as someone very much determined to learn from experience, to encourage discussion and debate, and to help Harvard pursue academic excellence in all of its many forms," James R. Houghton, the senior member of the corporation, wrote in a public letter in February.

But behind the scenes, Harper, who works for a law firm in New York and is former legal adviser to the US State Department under President Clinton, has been rumored for months to be unhappy with Summers. A person close to Harvard's leadership who is familiar with the discussions about Harper's resignation said it was ''the other shoe falling," the culmination of longstanding tensions.

That person said Harper was displeased with Summers's criticism of celebrity professor Cornel West, which prompted West to leave Harvard. Harper was also upset, according to the source, both about Summers's comments on women in January and his remarks about Native American history at a conference this past fall. In that speech, Summers contended that many more Native Americans were killed by disease than by Europeans, and spoke of ''the vast majority of the suffering" as a ''coincidence that was a consequence" of assimilation and ''nobody's plan."

In June, the Harvard Crimson cited unnamed former and current Harvard officials as saying Harper had long been critical of Summers's ''abrasive management style" and contended that Harper expressed reservations about Summers during the search for a president.

With Harper's departure, Houghton is the only corporation member whose membership on the board predates Summers's presidency. Summers himself sits on the corporation and plays a major role in naming members.

''Conrad Harper's candid and insightful counsel on a wide range of important matters has strongly benefited the university," Summers said in a written statement.

Harper's departure is another embarrassment for Summers, one that interrupts the calm that had settled over the campus this summer; however, it does suggest that the majority of the corporation remains behind the president.

''Thinking of this from a logical standpoint, he would be very unlikely to resign if he were in a majority or thought he could be influential," said Richard J. Zeckhauser, a Harvard professor and Summers's friend.

Bombardieri can be reached at bombardieri@globe.com.