Summers should go, ex-Harvard dean says

When he announced he was stepping down a year ago, Harvard University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dean Peter T. Ellison didn't detail his reasons, saying only that it was ''appropriate" for administrators to be comfortable with President Lawrence H. Summers's ''style."

But yesterday, in an exclusive interview, Ellison gave a searing account of his experience working with Summers and said Summers should resign. While Summers has come under withering attack from faculty, Ellison's comments mark the first time an administrator who served under Summers has publicly criticized the president.

Ellison, who left the dean's office last summer, told the Globe he resigned his post because Summers undermined his authority, broke an important promise, and made statements ''that appear less than fully truthful."

''This does not seem to me any longer to be a matter of style or personality, but of character," Ellison wrote in a statement that he provided, in addition to a phone interview, in response to questions from the Globe. Referring to Summers's former role as treasury secretary under President Clinton, he said: ''It may be the way people treat their colleagues and subordinates in Washington, but it is not the way it has been done, or should be done, in an institution like ours."

In the interview, Ellison also related a tale in which Summers startled him by saying that those in his own field, economics, are smarter than political scientists and sociologists.

In calling for Summers to step down, Ellison was reflecting on not only his own experience but that of Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean William C. Kirby, whose announcement last month that he will leave this summer has sparked a renewal of faculty attacks on Summers. Professors say that Kirby was pushed out by Summers, and several have called for Summers to resign.

Ellison added that he would not recommend to any colleague that they consider serving as a dean under Summers.

A spokesman said Summers was not available yesterday to respond to Ellison's comments.

The former dean, an anthropologist who remains a Harvard professor, said that before his concerns boiled over, he had been disturbed by a number of the president's comments.

Over lunch not long after Summers took over the presidency in 2001, Ellison said, Summers suggested that some funds should be moved from a sociology program to the Kennedy School, home to many economists and political scientists. ''President Summers asked me, didn't I agree that, in general, economists are smarter than political scientists, and political scientists are smarter than sociologists?" Ellison said. ''To which I laughed nervously and didn't reply."

A major critique of Summers by faculty has been that he plays favorites with subject areas.

In the fall of 2004, Ellison said, he was working on a new doctoral program in the life sciences that would cross over several of Harvard's schools, including the medical school and arts and sciences. He met to discuss the program with Summers, Provost Steven E. Hyman, and a medical school professor.

Harvard has a number of doctoral programs that involve different schools within the university, including the business school and the Kennedy School of Government. But doctoral programs have always been overseen by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, which is part of the larger Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Ellison said Summers spent the entire meeting arguing that there was a ''conflict of interest" in locating the new joint program in Ellison's school. Instead, Summers said the responsibility should be transferred to the provost. However, the meeting ended without a decision being made.

Ellison said he didn't understand why Summers saw a conflict but, more important, felt it was inappropriate to discuss the possibility of yielding some of his power in front of someone from another school.

A few days after the meeting, Ellison said, he heard that the medical school colleague who was at the meeting had informed a number of other people that the life sciences doctoral program ''might well" be shifted from Ellison's responsibility to Hyman's.

The dean said he was appalled, because the rumor ''implied to my colleagues that I didn't have the president's confidence."

Ellison said he immediately told Kirby he would offer to resign. Summers called Ellison shortly thereafter.

It was a Friday, and according to Ellison, Summers said that he understood Ellison's concerns and that he would send out a letter on Monday explaining that the authority for the new program would rest with arts and sciences.

Ellison said the two discussed the wording of the letter. Ellison said he would withdraw his resignation, and Summers said he would send Ellison a copy of the letter.

The letter was never sent, Ellison said, and that convinced him that he should resign.

Later, a professor asked Summers at a faculty meeting if he had ''been contemplating or conducting even preliminary discussions" about removing some of arts and sciences' control over doctoral programs. The president said no.

Summers's spokesman, John Longbrake, said yesterday that arts and sciences ''is the only faculty that grants PhDs, and changing that has not been under consideration."

Meanwhile yesterday, the elected faculty council sent professors a statement saying they believe the conflict between Summers and professors should be resolved before a search for a replacement for Kirby can begin.

Bombardieri can be reached at bombardieri@globe.com.