Summers' foes see a CEO approach

Harvard University faculty members angered by a dramatic drop in the number of tenured jobs offered to women got their chance to meet with Lawrence H. Summers last October. But just as the professor chosen to lay out their concerns stood up to make her presentation, they said, the university president stood up, too -- and headed for the dessert table.

After that inauspicious start, the lunch ended on a sour note as well. Summers told the group, ''You can tell us what you think the problem is, but don't tell us how to solve it," according to an account of the meeting offered by critics.

Summers's apparent lack of interest in finding a shared solution illustrated to several faculty members at the meeting what has become perhaps the central critique of his presidency: that he runs the university like an autocrat or a domineering CEO.

''Are we citizens or employees?" Stephen Owen, one of only 17 elite ''university professors" at Harvard, asked at a Feb. 22 faculty meeting. ''If we have become employees, I think we would like to know."

Owen also contended that ''the very qualities that make a good CEO are inherently in conflict" with the traditional notion of a university as ''a self-governing community."

Summers's top-down corporate style of leadership, his detractors say, plays out in both his personal interactions and the way he has sought to put his mark on one of the most decentralized universities in America.

The controversy is expected to escalate Tuesday, when members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences consider two motions at their monthly meeting. One would declare that the faculty ''lacks confidence" in Summers's leadership. The second, considered more likely to pass, would admonish him for his Jan. 14 remarks suggesting that women might lack the same ''intrinsic aptitude" as men in science, and would express concern about ''aspects of the president's managerial approach," though it also gives Summers credit for promising to address the problem.

In a brief interview last week, Summers said that ''there's a lot that I need to do and that we all need to do together, to strengthen working relationships and the sense of collegiality . . . The only way that a university makes progress and strengthens itself is collectively and collegially."

While Summers works on remaking his relationship with the faculty, the campus continues to buzz with debate about what went so wrong that professors are even considering a no-confidence vote on the man who holds the most high-profile academic post in America.

One of the most frequent criticisms of the president is that he rules by fear. Mary C. Waters, the sociology department chairwoman, raised the issue at a faculty meeting Feb. 15, when she described several meetings at which Summers responded to critical questions from her colleagues ''in this way that made you want to crawl under the table," she said in a recent interview.

The sense of fear has also been fed by a string of sudden departures of longtime administrators, even though they did not work directly for Summers. Among those was the dean of Harvard College, Harry R. Lewis. Waters said ''it was very clear" that Lewis had been pushed out for disagreeing with Summers.

Lewis's job was made obsolete in March 2003 by an administrative reorganization that Summers did not oversee, but Lewis had been critical of the president on a number of occasions. He expressed skepticism about Summers's interest in increasing Harvard's international student population, and also gave a campus talk that touched on free speech in which he warned against ''broad labels." This was perceived as a reference to Summers's earlier comments that proponents of divestment from Israel were ''taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect, if not their intent."

Lewis, who remains a member of the faculty, would not comment for this article.

Summers has sought to bring more coordination to a university traditionally made up of fiefdoms, getting more involved than his predecessors in everything from hiring decisions to financial matters.

He has also alienated many on campus who contend that he has used his authority to play favorites. Summers has made clear that his vision for Harvard includes a greater emphasis on the sciences. The ambitious campus the university plans to build in Allston will have a heavy science focus, and much of the growth of the faculty is also expected to come in burgeoning areas such as life sciences and engineering.

''From interdisciplinary research to joint degree programs, to better labor relations, to financial savings . . . to more effective fund-raising, to greater contributions to solving global problems, there is much that greater cooperation between the different schools can accomplish," Summers said. ''It is something that is especially important now with the remarkable opportunity that Harvard has in Allston."

There are some strong supporters of these views. ''There is a silent majority" not heard from in the recent debate, said astronomy professor Alyssa Goodman. ''Some of the things he's done are pretty bad, but I think it's great for Harvard to say we should get more involved in science."

But some departments feel slighted. For example, William Mills Todd III, chairman of the comparative literature department and a former dean of undergraduate education, noted how little the humanities were mentioned in an important report released last spring on the ongoing review of Harvard's undergraduate curriculum.

''There's a sense that Summers has a personal agenda about the various disciplines, and I think this is one of the principal sources of fear, puzzlement, and anger," he said.

Many of Summers's detractors say their major concern is not with specific decisions, but the undemocratic way they say the decisions have come about. Owen said in his speech that the faculty's perception is that ''we have the classic conflict between the autocrat and the polis, the self-governing community.

''In the polis, if you are asked to serve on a committee, you give up your Sunday afternoons for a semester to study a problem -- not because you are compelled to, but for the good of the community," he continued. ''However, when you feel that your efforts are mere show, that you are no longer in control of decisions being made, then there is anger."

Many of the things that have rankled faculty members have arisen within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The controversial review of the undergraduate curriculum, for example, is overseen by the current Arts and Science dean, William C. Kirby, not by Summers. Still, many professors see Summers's hand in Kirby's work.

''People feel Larry has micromanaged things," said Arthur Kleinman, chairman of the anthropology department. ''A number of my colleagues feel Bill Kirby seems to be looking over his shoulder as if he has to get the nod from Larry to do things, and that's never the experience any of us had with previous deans."

Four working groups spent all last year laboring over recommendations for the curriculum review, but their reports were never made available to the faculty. Instead, an administrator drafted an amalgamated final report.

Professor Kathleen Coleman said that final document included a number of recommendations about undergraduate majors, her committee's topic, ''that our group had not actually put forward."

Faculty members also say Summers has shown disrespect by reading the newspaper in meetings or rolling his eyes at comments with which he disagrees. His behavior has become such a hot topic that psychology professor Stephen M. Kosslyn, a Summers supporter, recently suggested on an intranet forum that the university appoint an ombudsman to collect complaints about the president's behavior.

Richard J. Zeckhauser, a Kennedy School of Government professor and friend of Summers, said he thinks that a handful of stories about Summers have been ''like a contagion, or a wildfire" spreading over campus.

''President Summers is a debater, and he thinks the best way to get advice is to play devil's advocate. I think he's learned that goes over better in economics than in some other areas," said Zeckhauser. ''He's competitive and can be combative," but ''I've known him a long time and have never seen him hurt a fly."

Marcella Bombardieri can be reached at bombardieri@globe.com.