Reading The Harvard Crimson to find out exactly why so many Harvard students supported then-University President Lawrence H. Summers was like trying to squeeze water from a rock. Both opinion and news stories covered a lot of ground but offered little analysis.
With the recent news that Drew Gilpin Faust, a Civil War historian and Harvard University dean, will be the next Harvard president, let’s hope that the campus newspaper will do a better job in analyzing her record after her term starts June 1. The Crimson should look back at its coverage of Summers’ popularity with the students, and learn from it. The most frequently cited reason for his popularity with the students was his commitment to the quality of undergraduate life and education. In a Feb. 22, 2006, opinion piece in The Crimson titled “The Economist,” a student columnist—in an attempt to elaborate on the above-mentioned reason—pointed out that Summers’ office has paid for renovations of a student pub, café and recreation center; initiated to increase participation in study-abroad programs; decided to make “Harvard’s financial aid the most generous in the world”; and “crafted an enduring vision for Harvard’s expansion into Allson,” a nearby Boston neighborhood. What’s missing from this long laundry list is a close, detailed inspection.
Admittedly, The Crimson is a campus publication, and some could argue that anyone living on or around campus is familiar with the details. However, if that is the case, why list reasons for Summers’ popularity at all? Aren’t the students and faculty who are aware of the specifics also aware of the laundry list? What service is performed by simply reminding them what they already know?
An analysis of the success or failure of Summers’ programs would help explain his popularity with the students. If he was popular despite the failure of his programs, then perhaps his attitude and approach were deemed more important. However, if his programs were successful, that may be the reason for his popularity. Of course, the connection between a program’s success or failure and the students’ approval or disapproval of him is not necessarily a causal one. Furthermore, the success of a five-year term would be more accurately measured in hindsight. But without a serious analysis of Summers’ programs, this back-and-forth rope-tugging is done with an invisible rope.
A news article that appeared in The Crimson on Feb. 22, 2006, titled “To Students, a Rock Star President,” quoted one student who emphasized Summers’ initiative to encourage education abroad. Did more students study abroad or at least express an interest in doing so in the future as a result of Summers’ initiative? The authors don’t say. The article also pointed out that Summers taught undergraduate courses, held regular office hours and attended campus events. But the reader is left to wonder as to why this is relevant. How was his teaching technique different? What went on during the office hours? Surely not everyone attended.
The article refers to a Crimson poll published on Feb. 21 that concluded “57 percent of 424 undergraduates surveyed said that Summers should not resign.” Three days after the poll results were published, an opinion piece written by an Economics Professor David Laibson, “Summers and the Students,” argued that the core reason students supported Summers was that he was “passionately interested in their ideas and their experiences.” Laibson does answer some of the questions I raised in the previous paragraph—e.g. Summers “argued with his students about every conceivable topic, from curricular reform to the ethics of stem cell research”—but, much like the rest of the coverage in The Crimson, he doesn’t examine the success of Summers’ programs, which would help explain, or at least set the discussion for, why Summers was popular with the majority of the students.
In the end, we are not only left in the dark—with the irony of having veritas as part of Harvard’s symbol—but also left wondering if the students are in there with us.
