So why didn’t the search committee pick University of Michigan President Lee C. Bollinger, a popular figure among his school’s undergrads? Why not Professor Amy Gutmann ’71, former Dean of the Faculty at Princeton, which is mostly undergraduates? Why not Harvard Provost Harvey V. Fineberg ’67, who had the ultimate context in which to evaluate the needs of the College—over 30 years of affiliation with Harvard?

Why Larry Summers, who has been away from students and academics for the last 10 years?

Summers’ undergraduate teaching career alone does not answer the question. During his 10 years as a Harvard professor, Summers taught only one undergraduate course, Economics 1410: “Public Sector Economics,” for two semesters just before he departed for the World Bank. As a graduate student, he had also been an Ec10 teaching fellow, and for three years was a Lowell House tutor. Nonetheless, his primary focus as a professor had been on graduate students.

That said, the qualities that Summers displayed in the front of the classroom—any classroom—earned him a reputation as a master teacher.

As a teaching fellow, he was clear, dynamic, and for some students, the best teacher they ever had. David G. Golden ’80 remembers being in Summers’ Ec10 section as a first-year. Despite initial frustration that he was being taught mostly by graduate students, and rarely by professors, Golden quickly realized that Summers was as good as it got.

And as a professor, Summers excelled.

“He was great, incredibly quick on his feet, which was especially important with Harvard undergraduates as his audience,” John Gruber, a teaching fellow for Economics 1410 says. “It was the ‘old Larry’—not organized, animated, but always willing to schmooze forever on the topic of the day.”

Sandra L. Decker, another Economics 1410 teaching fellow, observed Summers both as his assistant and as his graduate student. “His classes were kind of a breath of fresh air. We went through the theory, but very much focused on policy,” she says.