Conrad K. Harper is a man of letters.

For one, he’s a devotee of 18th-century English poet Samuel Johnson. “How many Wall Street lawyers are also experts on Samuel Johnson?” asks Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr., the outgoing chair of Harvard’s Department of African and African American Studies.

And he’s an active member of the Jane Austen Society of North America.

But Harper is also a sender of letters—specifically, two letters that are destined for the historical archives.

The first, dated May 20, 1994, while Harper was the U.S. State Department’s top lawyer, concluded that then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher should authorize American diplomats to back United Nations resolutions stating that “genocide has occurred” in Rwanda. Three other senior State Department officials signed the letter as well.

The letter warned that American diplomats would undermine the country’s credibility if they did not attach the “genocide label” to the slaughter of Tutsis.

The second letter, dated July 14, 2005, dealt with an issue far less lethal than the Hutu-Tutsi strife. But again, Harper’s words would resound long after the ink had dried.

“I believe that Harvard’s best interests require your resignation,” Harper, now 65, wrote to University President Lawrence H. Summers, after he himself resigned from the Corporation, the University’s highest governing body.

SUMMERS’ LAST SUMMER

The letter was the first clear public indication that Summers had lost the full support of the Corporation.

Specifically, Harper disagreed with the decision of the Corporation’s senior fellow, James R. Houghton ’58, to give Summers a three-percent salary raise.

“In my judgment, your 2004-2005 conduct, implicating, as it does, profound issues of temperament and judgment, merits no increase whatever,” Harper wrote to Summers.

Citing several examples, including “the unfortunate incident” with Cornel R. West ’74 and Summers’ remarks on women in science, Harper wrote that he saw a “pattern” in the president’s behavior.

Harper’s letter “was quite astonishing to us, because we had just presumed that the Corporation was unified,” Gates says.

And it was all the more astonishing because Harper had been seen as a “team player in every way,” says anthropologist and outspoken Summers critic J. Lorand Matory ’82.

“It made it clear to those who were watching that the demand for Summers’ resignation was not just the product of some radical marginal opinion,” Matory says.

Harper’s departure also brought the issue of Summers’ leadership back to Faculty meetings. At the first meeting of the fall semester, Matory opened a discussion on Harper’s departure, and several professors called for greater transparency from the Corporation.

Climenko Professor of Law Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., who has known Harper for over 30 years, says his friend’s decision to step down was “the first indication at all that there were differing opinions among the governing boards in terms of the president’s leadership.”

Ogletree also says that Harper’s resignation—which came about because Houghton had cut off debate over Summers’ salary—will encourage the Corporation to be more tolerant of disagreement in the future.

Ogletree adds that while Harper’s departure from the Corporation represented a “great sacrifice in terms of the role he could play in shaping the future direction of the University,” he remains “in some ways even more committed to Harvard,” serving as a mentor for many Law School graduates as they seek careers in corporate law or public service.

Even though Harper will not be at this year’s Commencement exercises, he says he’ll be having lunch in New York City with a current Law School student to discuss her career plans.

A CRUSADER FOR CIVIL RIGHTS

Harper will go down in the University’s history books as the first African-American member of the Corporation and for his commitment to civil rights.

He cites two cases from early in his career among his proudest moments as a lawyer. At age 28, as an attorney for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense Fund, Harper argued on behalf of black Little Rock, Ark. residents seeking membership in an all-white club. He took the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court—and won.

At 33, as a lawyer for New York firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, he won a ruling from a Federal District Court judge in Greenville, Miss. stating that county officials had to provide assistance to illiterate black voters.

Ogletree says that Harper’s entire career—from his early lawyering days to his State Department service—shows a consistent pattern. “He tries to examine injustices wherever they occur and to encourage those with the power and authority to address them in every way,” Ogletree says. “He’s not a flame-thrower but a crusader for civil rights and equality.”

Since his resignation from the Corporation, Harper says he continues to be involved in several nonprofit organizations, sitting on the boards of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Philosophy Society.

While he says he is traveling “a fair amount,” he adds that “my wife and I continue to enjoy the candy store that is Manhattan,” where they make their permanent home.

—Staff writer Claire M. Guehenno can be reached at guehenno@fas.harvard.edu.