Reviews of both the academic and financial plans of all of the schools conducted by Provost Steven E. Hyman continued this year.

And Summers cited as accomplishments a number of new multi-school degree programs between the Business and Medical Schools and the Law and Public Health Schools.

But discussions of interdisciplinary programs in the life sciences have not yet moved beyond planning stages.

Since last spring, Summers has maintained that such initiatives were “in the pipeline.”

Yesterday, he said “we’re much closer to the launch of several major initiatives that will strengthen the University’s capacity in the life sciences.”

He again declined to describe those programs, however, and saying only that they would probably be launched next fall.

On one of the broadest of Summers’ priorities—planning for a future campus across the river in Allston—there were few outward signs of progress, but Summers said headway was made nonetheless.

Summers said Allston planners this year learned “considerably” more about the two primary possibilities for the land—either creating an inter-school, interdisciplinary science campus in Allston, or moving professional schools that reside currently in Cambridge.

A report commissioned by the Law School, Summers said, improved his “understanding of space needs and the ways in which a professional school campus could fit in, what its needs would be in a different location.”

Further, he said, he now knows more about how vacated physical spaces in Cambridge could be converted for different uses.

Finally, planners have become convinced of the necessity of ensuring that some Allston space is used to increase available student housing, he said.

But the administration has backed off of one planner’s comment last October that the University would have some decision as to the use of the land by the end of this summer.

Summers would only say yesterday that a decision on direction would be announced “sometime.” “Sometime before too terribly long,” he added.

Summers remained hesitant to discuss the fallout of one major change since last year, the high profile departure of former Fletcher University Professor Cornel R. West ’74.

Asked why he thought he had received less negative press this year than last, Summers said he didn’t know.

“Different people have different views on different things,” he said. “I think my job is to pull the high academic standards to make the University as great a place as I possibly can.”

West was not as close-lipped yesterday. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times following his appearance in the movie “The Matrix Reloaded,” West lashed out at Summers.

“The difference between [Princeton President] Shirley Tilghman and Lawrence Summers is like the difference between Abe Lincoln and Dan Quayle,” West said.

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