Lawrence H Summers

During the campaign, when Barack Obama needed an authoritative voice to defend his tax and spending proposals, he turned to Lawrence H. Summers -- the Clinton administration Treasury secretary and former Harvard president who has one of the sharpest minds in modern economics. Now, as President-elect Obama considers his choice for Treasury secretary, Summers' name is again front and center. But this time, the decision is not so clear.

Besieged Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers announced Tuesday that he would resign at the end of the academic year, avoiding open warfare with a growing bloc of alienated faculty members and ending a five-year tenure mired in controversy.

If Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers was worried about how the undergraduates would greet him Wednesday night at his first scheduled event since announcing his resignation, those fears quickly were put to rest. He got a standing ovation after he walked in. He got a standing ovation before he left. A row of students with red letters painted on their chests spelled out "Larry." Sarah Bahan, 22, was wistful as she left the meeting.

Lawrence H. Summers, the former U.S. Treasury secretary who resigned as Harvard University's president this year after clashes with faculty members, will join New York hedge fund firm D.E. Shaw & Co. as a part-time managing director. "Larry is an enormously gifted economist and has made major contributions as a researcher, a public servant and an academic leader," David Shaw, chairman of the $25-billion fund manager, said in a statement Thursday.

Re "The life science imperative," Opinion, Jan. 29 Although I agree with Lawrence H. Summers' argument, if we're honest with ourselves, we also have to factor into our lead in science and technology in the 20th century that Europe's and Japan's capacities were largely bombed out of existence during World War II. The United States was not a leading place for science before the war. We also have to thank Hitler for unintentionally sending all those...

Re "An occasion for redo economics," Opinion, March 26 It's been said that the Federal Reserve's job is to remove the punchbowl just as the party's getting started, thereby limiting the inevitable hangover that follows rapid economic expansion. But the Alan Greenspan and Ben S. Bernanke regimes not only refilled the punchbowl, they cranked up the music while investors of all stripes danced and asset prices zoomed. Amazingly, Lawrence H. Summers now asks the Fed to go easy, in effect offering a Bloody Mary as dawn approaches.

Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers apologized late Wednesday for his remarks last week suggesting that innate differences might make women less capable of succeeding at math and science than men, and acknowledged that his comments sent "an unintended signal of discouragement to talented girls and women." In a letter addressed to "members of the Harvard Community," Summers said: "I deeply regret the impact of my comments and apologize for not having weighed them more carefully."

Saying he hoped to "turn heat into light" after the recent controversy over his remarks on women in science, Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers announced the appointment Thursday of two faculty task forces on women and pledged to create a senior administrative position to support gender diversity.

Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers faced pressure from some faculty to resign Wednesday as a controversy over his comments about women evolved into a broader indictment of his leadership. One professor spoke of a brewing "rebellion" against Summers after a meeting of at least 250 undergraduate faculty Tuesday, at which speaker after speaker criticized the Ivy League university leader.

Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers released a transcript Thursday of controversial remarks he made last month suggesting that women had innately lower aptitudes for math and science than men. The transcript -- posted on Summers' Harvard website -- showed that in addressing a Jan. 14 conference in Cambridge, Mass.