Citation:
Date Published:
Mar 5, 2006Abstract:
Larry Summers's experience says much about what Harvard—and any great university—should look for in a president.
Summers was not forced out by a radical segment of the faculty of arts and sciences. He was not forced out because bold visions threatened a complacent faculty. Most faculty in arts and sciences are eager to reinvigorate undergraduate education, strengthen cutting-edge science, internationalize the university, develop the Allston campus, and encourage collaboration among the schools. Any president of Harvard at this time would have essentially the same goals.
Achieving such goals requires raw intelligence, which Summers has in abundance. But more crucial to leadership than IQ is the ability to inspire others with your vision and to help them come to see it as their vision, too. You must understand the culture of an institution even as you try to change it. Business Week wrote: “Summers joins the ranks of recent leaders brought in to generate change in organizations only to misfire and fail, [such as] Carly Fiorina at Hewlett-Packard.”
Giving orders goes only so far. As the late Richard Neustadt, America's premier student of the US presidency, put it: Presidential power is the power to persuade.
During his presidency, Summers planned the Allston campus and rationalized the budget, but failed to make progress toward his central academic goals. He came in with much political capital, but frittered it away on battles he did not need to fight. He alienated even those—from all disciplinary and ideological backgrounds—most committed to his goals and to Harvard.
Take one of Summers's highest priorities—reforming the undergraduate curriculum. Successful curricular reform requires that hundreds of instructors change their behavior in hundreds of classrooms that cannot be policed. The hard part about curricular reform is not finding the right answer, because there is no single right answer. The hard part is inspiring and persuading.
Harvard's justly famed (though now outdated) Core Curriculum of the 1970s succeeded not because of its rationale or rules, but because the process of reform itself reinvigorated an entire generation of instructors who (for several decades) then took teaching more seriously. Most Harvard faculty agree that our undergraduate education needs change, perhaps even radical change. But to forge a consensus out of many creative but discordant ideas requires deft leadership. That was what Derek Bok brought to the task then. That is the quality Harvard should seek now in its next president.
Bold statements and a forceful personality are not enough. Indeed, clumsily applied, boldness and forcefulness can lead to weakness. What was most dispiriting about Summers's final year to those who shared his values was that he relinquished the capacity to say no, even to bad ideas. “Superman is surrounded by kryptonite,” said one irrepressible colleague. “Now is the time to move.” Political correctness was not the root of the problem, and politically correct decisions could not solve it.
One especially misguided idea is that deans and presidents should be chosen by faculty. Harvard is already unduly decentralized, and faculty-chosen executive leadership is a recipe for blandness. Larry Summers understood that perfectly well, but having squandered political capital through four arrogant years, he acquiesced in unwise limits on presidential discretion. Harvard's next leader must have sufficient emotional and social intelligence to preserve the ability to say no.
Above all, the power to persuade depends on the capacity to maintain trust. Colleagues need to believe that leaders will not only act honorably but speak truthfully. Once a faculty comes to believe that their president is “less than truthful” (as a former dean reportedly said of this president), the basis for leadership of any kind has vanished.
Harvard is a strong university. Its faculties, including its Faculty of Arts and Sciences, want bold change. Professors do not agree on exactly what the changes should be. That is the nature of a great faculty—the more creative, the more likely to disagree. But Harvard faculty have followed strong leaders in the past, and they will follow them in the future. What Harvard needs now is a boldly reformist leader, but one who actually knows how to make reform happen.
Robert D. Putnam is the Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University and a member of the Executive Committee of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.