A drama in three acts, and on three separate stages, played out on campus this semester, as professors seized the spotlight at heated Faculty meetings to air their frustrations with University President Lawrence H. Summers.

In the course of 28 days in February and March, the normally quiet and sober meetings were transformed into what some called a “show trial” and others deemed an inevitable confrontation with Summers, who had sparked the controversy with his Jan. 14 remarks on women in science.

Speaking at the Feb. 15 Faculty meeting, Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies Diana Eck articulated the grievances, concerns that extended far beyond the offense of Summers’ comments: “How will you respond to what is clearly a widening crisis of confidence in your fitness to lead our University?”

The fallout from Summers’ remarks—culminating in a stunning vote of no confidence in the president on March 15—brought the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) to a near-standstill, delaying the full Faculty’s discussion of the Harvard College Curricular Review and pushing any votes on the review to the next academic year.

The meetings were replete with indignant rhetoric, dramatic maneuvering, and a climax worthy of Shakespeare.

“Do you, in fact, prefer fear to reason?” Sociology Department Chair Mary C. Waters asked Summers on Feb. 15, as more than 250 of her colleagues packed into the high-ceilinged Faculty Room in University Hall erupted in applause.

It was Act One of the showdown between Summers and the Faculty.

But as quickly as the crisis burst onto the public stage in February, the drama retreated backstage soon after the vote of no confidence in March, and by the time the ice began to thaw in Cambridge, things seemed to have returned to business as usual.

A CRISIS ERUPTS

Even though Summers’ January speech at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) conference was widely condemned by members of FAS and the national media, few anticipated the firestorm that awaited the president at the Faculty meeting one month later.

At the meeting, the simmering controversy over Summers’ remarks boiled over into a wider crisis that quickly engulfed the entire University.

Punctuated by nervous silences and bursts of boisterous applause, the 90-minute meeting saw some of the University’s most prominent professors hurl a stream of intense and unrelenting criticism at the president.

On the docket that day were a discussion of Kirby’s annual letter to the Faculty and a briefing on the progress of the ongoing curricular review—but the meeting never made it beyond the questions period.

It quickly became clear that the women in science comments were the fuse that ignited a powder keg of discontent Summers had been filling for the past four years.

Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology Theda Skocpol spoke early in the meeting of a “broader crisis of trust, governance, and leadership of which this episode and its manipulative handling so far are but one instance.” Skocpol enumerated several broad grievances against Summers’ leadership style, saying that he had used “fear and manipulation” against Harvard staff and that his handling of professors violated “elementary norms of academic freedom.”