The issue of Mass. Hall oversight of the PEPFAR grant has received more attention recently from SPH faculty because of more general tensions between the SPH and the University.

SPH faculty have met twice in the past couple of months to discuss Summers’ management of the University and his comments on women in science. One faculty member, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that other issues, such as the move to Allston and the management of the PEPFAR grant, have surfaced in these discussions, and more recently at the SPH faculty retreat the weekend of Mar. 29.

These meetings led to the SPH faculty council’s invitation to Summers to attend an SPH faculty meeting, which he did last Wednesday in a closed-door session.

Jennifer Leaning, chair of the SPH faculty council, said that Summers made it “very clear” at the meeting that future grants of this nature will also be administered with a “substantial amount of managerial oversight by central administration,” Leaning said.

Leaning added that Summers told faculty at the meeting last week that the grant could have been managed better.

“There was mutual acknowledgement that the ways in which [this] grant was handled was not the way that any party would have liked it to happen,” she said.

“We just want to make sure that people with the right administrative skills are in the right positions,” Hyman said last week. “With respect to the scientific aspects, I am proud and delighted to have Dr. Kanki at the helm.”

Summers could not be reached for comment yesterday, a spokesman said.

—Staff writer May Habib can be reached at habib@fas.harvard.edu