While Allison said most task forces “end up having not very great impact,” he thought Kissinger’s and Summers’ prominence might counter that problem.

Summers has often been compared to Kissinger, as both were Harvard intellectuals who went on to great political success in Washington.

And Summers’ appointment is unusual—no Harvard president since James B. Conant ’14 has had significant influence on national policy while in office.

Summers’ position, however, will be far less time-intensive.

Stephen Shoemaker, the teaching fellow for Religion 1513, “History of Harvard and its Presidents,” said Conant, a chemist by training, spent around 50 percent of his time during World War II in Washington working on the Manhattan Project.

The task force, Kupchan said, will meet once a month in New York until September 2003, when it plans to release its report.

Allison said task forces are generally not labor-intensive, as staff workers with the sponsoring think tank do much of the drafting of the reports.

The appointment may signal a departure for Summers, however, who has been reluctant to make his political voice heard as Harvard’s president.

He has made a point of speaking out on education-related issues like affirmative action and anti-Semitism in the academy. But he has in the past declined to comment on whether he supports war in Iraq or the Bush administration economic policies. He does, however, indulge in the occasional humorous jab at Bush.

Summers was unavailable for comment yesterday.

Former Fletcher University Professor Cornel R. West ’74, who left for Princeton last year after a dispute with Summers over his own extracurricular activities, was also unavailable for comment. He was off-campus.

—Staff writer Elisabeth S. Theodore can be reached at theodore@fas.harvard.edu.