Waiting Game

Following on the heels of a soft-spoken, Renaissance-scholar president who inspired more sympathy than fear, supporters say the chief executive Summers brings a welcome sense of power and order to the table.

But as a man who is said to have won the presidency on the basis of his sweeping vision for the University, Summers needs to do more, to do big things.

He needs to watch over the once in a quarter century review of the College curriculum that will keep the University’s pedagogy a model throughout higher education. He needs to deliver on a promise to bring a greater focus on the life sciences to the University. And he needs to develop Harvard’s campus of the future across the river in Allston.

On these bigger issues, Summers isn’t going to be able to do it alone.

With the FAS curricular review, he can poke and prod, but ultimately a Faculty vote will usher in whatever change is to occur. Summers will have to go to the mat to wrestle out of wealthy donors the millions necessary to fund major new labs and cross-school collaborations, but the Faculty will need to be behind the initiatives for them to succeed. And while consultants, professional planners and administrators will design the ideal campus, the transition from blueprint to reality will require at least the grudging consent of the faculties that will call it home.

So far, Summers has yet to prove himself on these counts, and some suggest that he’s less comfortable with these consensus-requiring processes.

With curricular review, Summers was unable to order the process into action. While Summers said he understands that mobilizing the Faculty behind a curricular review takes time, others said he has been frustrated by the slow pace of the process.

Kirby wrote in an October letter that he hoped to have curricular review committees in place by the end of the first semester, but was unable to announce full committee rosters until May.

“I think his feeling is that the review should go faster,” Dean of Undergraduate Education Benedict H. Gross ’71 said of Summers. “But he understands that this is a complicated issue that will take time and that the Faculty needs to agree on it.”

And a University Hall source said the slow pace of change in general—and the need for consensus—has bothered Summers.

“Summers is very impatient, and wants to make decisions and have them implemented quickly, without a lot of consultation or even planning,” the source said. “He gets quite frustrated when he has made a decision and people continue to discuss and raise concerns or objections to the decision that has been taken.”

While Kirby succeeded in signing up several dozen professors to serve on the review committees—an accomplishment given the Faculty’s sometime aversion to administrative duties—there have been no clues whether or not Summers will be able to guide the Faculty toward his objectives.

With another of Summers’ top priorities—a push for new initiatives in the life sciences that would encourage collaboration between leading researchers at the Medical School, FAS and other Boston institutions—Summers has struggled to rally faculty to overcome their divisions. And some said he has been reluctant to engage faculty in a meaningful manner.

Summers has been promoting life science initiatives as “in the pipeline” since last year, but no progress has been announced. One proposal for a Harvard-MIT collaboration headed up by MIT Professor Eric Lander was reviewed by the Corporation yesterday, but Summers and Hyman refuse to comment on their plans.