Instead, nearly 200 came out in support of Summers as president, even though many registered displeasure with his performance and leadership. The threat of taking a formal stand against him evaporated after Summers told the crowded meeting: "If there are harsh words to be said, I ask only that you direct them toward me, not toward one another."
"He's not the gentlest and most tactful fellow," veteran physics professor Roy Glauber said as professors hurried out over an icy brick pavement, "but he was apologetic and somewhat accommodating. It's a start."
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday February 27, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 48 words Type of Material: Correction
Harvard president -- An article in Saturday's Section A said Harvard's board chose Lawrence H. Summers in July 2001 as the university's 27th president since its founding in 1640. Summers was chosen in March 2001 and took office in July 2001. Also, the university was founded in 1636.
But this week, one professor placed a no-confidence vote on the agenda of the next faculty meeting on March 15. Still, after the lessening of tensions, the move appears to have little faculty support.
A no-confidence vote would have no practical effect because Summers could only be fired by the Harvard Corp., the executive board whose members have so far indicated solid support. But such a move could signal the willingness of an embittered undergraduate faculty to blunt Summers' efforts to transform Harvard's curriculum.
When Summers was chosen by the board in July 2001 as Harvard's 27th president since its founding in 1640, he quickly cast a more activist silhouette than Neil L. Rudenstine, his predecessor.
Like many heads of American universities during the 1980s and 1990s, Rudenstine was a quiet, consummate fundraiser who took care to knit together Harvard's disparate constituencies -- professors and researchers, students, well-heeled alumni and most of all, the influential board members who oversaw Harvard's future.
When Rudenstine retired, pleading exhaustion from 80-hour weeks, board members sought Summers to steer Harvard's long-awaited expansion of its campus across the Charles River in Allston and overhaul the courses taught to its undergraduates -- in part by bringing more emphasis on science.
"The board knew what they were getting," said Richard Zeckhauser, a professor at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
"You're not going to get the Allston campus built without ruffling some feathers. Larry Summers came in and upset the apple cart."
At Treasury, he was known as an acerbic whose withering rejoinders alienated other economists as well as Republican legislators who questioned the Clinton administration's financial policies. The choice of Summers to lead the university seemed to invite a shift back to an era when Harvard presidents pontificated on public matters.
