Anthropology Department Chair Arthur Kleinman followed Skocpol, expanding upon her statement in no uncertain terms: “We are not cowards, we are not spineless, we are not with you.”

“Your presidency has created in me, for the very first time, the dismayed and undermining feeling of misplaced loyalty,” Kleinman said.

The only professor to speak in support of Summers at the meeting was Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature Ruth R. Wisse, who said, to subdued applause, “This is a show trial to beat all show trials.” Wisse denounced the faculty movement as a battle to stifle academic freedom in the name of political correctness.

“There is clearly an enormous amount of air to clear,” Summers said just before the meeting was adjourned, after a vote had passed to continue the meeting in a special session one week later.

The eight professors who spoke out harshly against the president had set in motion a rocky battle for influence in the University, to be fought in the following Faculty meetings, on the pages of newspapers, and behind closed doors.

ANTICIPATION BUILDS

Held in the lofty University Hall Faculty Room­, with the afternoon sun pouring through large windows onto walls covered with oil paintings, Faculty meetings rarely attract more than a sixth of FAS’ 802 voting members.

Summers typically sits on a high wooden chair in the front of the room, at the head of a round table with Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 and Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby to his left and right. At Gross’ left sits outgoing Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Peter T. Ellison.

Sometimes, while listening to speakers during the meeting, Summers swings his feet under the table, and absentmindedly twirls his index finger in a circle around his mouth.

In the tension-fraught week following the outburst at the Feb. 15 Faculty meeting, speculation circulated that the Faculty would attempt to put confidence in Summers’ leadership to a vote.

On Thursday, Feb. 17, Summers bowed to Faculty pressure and released the transcript of the NBER talk.

But the release of the transcript only sharpened the lines of debate on campus, as a group of professors circulated a petition supporting Summers’ leadership and pledging to affirm confidence in him if it should come to a vote in the following meeting.

On Feb. 22, camera crews and news vans flocked to Lowell Lecture Hall, where the special Faculty meeting had been moved to accommodate the expected high turnout. There, the press gathered along with several dozen demonstrators behind a police barricade on Kirkland Street.

The president, accompanied by University Provost Steven E. Hyman and a plainclothes police officer, walked briskly through the cold gray afternoon toward the reporters on the sidewalk across from the Science Center. But Summers, clearly agitated, made a wrong turn, making a right toward the Mallinckrodt biology labs rather than a left toward the doors of Lowell Lecture Hall.

“Over here, Larry,” Hyman called out.