In the wake of Summers’ controversial January remarks on women in science, conservative commentators rallied to Summers’ defense—with FoxNews host Bill O’Reilly (KSG Class of 1996) and bombastic radio broadcaster Rush Limbaugh, among others, weighing in on the University president’s behalf.

But after Summers disavowed his remarks and said he had “made a big mistake,” right-wingers’ ardor for the University president cooled.

“[H]e has become a serial apologizer and accomplished groveler,” lamented George F. Will, the Washington Post’s conservative columnist, in late January.

In recent weeks, the president’s $50 million initiative to bolster the status of women and minorities on campus has drawn further groans from the right side of the political spectrum.

“I was a little bit dismayed to see that President Summers is now buying back the good will of the Harvard faculty,” Gigot says.

“It could be said that his backtracking since the famous incident with the vomiting woman is a sign that his political liberalism is affecting his academic conservatism,” Mansfield says—in an apparent allusion to Nancy Hopkins, the MIT biologist who left Summers’ January speech because, she said, his comments left her physically ill. (Please see story, page 27.)

Nearly five months after his controversial remarks, Summers appears to have quelled the tempest that once swirled around Mass Hall.

But in doing so, he may be losing his unlikely coterie of conservative champions.

—Staff writer Daniel J. Hemel can be reached at hemel@fas.harvard.edu.