Several Crimson editors also spoke to Bradley for the book.

As he recounts Summers’ now famous dispute with former Fletcher University Professor Cornel R. West ’74, Bradley puts forth new details of the contentious meetings which ultimately led to West’s departure in 2002.

Summers, the book claims, attempted to pit West against Harvey C. Mansfield ’53, the Kenan professor of government, who attributed grade inflation in part to a rise in the black population at Harvard.

“I want you to help me fuck Harvey Mansfield,” Summers told West, according to the book.

West did not return a message seeking comment yesterday.

Nearly a year later, after West announced his departure for Princeton, Summers is said to have implied other factors were behind their dispute.

In an off-the-record meeting with the editorial board of The New York Times, according to Bradley, Summers asked rhetorically, “What would you do if you had a professor with a sexual harassment problem?”

Ruminating on that comment, Bradley writes, “It was one thing to confront a scholar face-to-face, but this rumor felt deliberately planted in the press, meant to be spread behind the scenes, without accountability. The new president was obviously versed in the ways of Washington. What did that bode for Harvard?”

As is customary in the nation’s capital, Bradley’s book is likely to receive the so-called “Washington read”—a quick scan through the index for one’s name—from Harvard faculty, administrators, and students.

And Summers aside, no one appears more often in the text of Harvard Rules than Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr., the chair of the department of African and African American studies who threatened to leave for Princeton after West’s departure.

Bradley writes that Summers flew to Gates’ home in Martha’s Vineyard in August 2001 to convince the treasured scholar to remain at Harvard.

“Both men had grievances,” writes Bradley. “Summers had heard through the grapevine that Gates had repeatedly called him ‘an asshole,’ and he asked him to stop....Gates responded that asshole wasn’t a word he would use. He would have called Summers a ‘motherfucker,’ and, yes, he probably had. So what?”

Gates confirmed yesterday that Summers visited him at his home but denied using either of the choice words attributed to him.

“The last person in the world I wanted to welcome into my home that day was Larry Summers,” Gates said in an interview, “but those are words I never used.”

Gates also denied Bradley’s assertion that he went to Summers in the spring of 2004 and asked for a raise, which Summers refused.