President of Harvard Resigns, Ending Stormy 5-Year Tenure

Correction Appended

Lawrence H. Summers resigned yesterday as president of Harvard University after a relatively brief and turbulent tenure of five years, nudged by Harvard's governing corporation and facing a vote of no confidence from the influential Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

The announcement by Dr. Summers, an economist and a former secretary of the Treasury, disappointed many students on the campus and raised questions about future leaders' ability to govern Harvard with its vocal and independent-minded faculty.

But advisers and confidants of Dr. Summers said he privately concluded a week ago that he should step down, after members of Harvard's governing corporation and friends — particularly from the Clinton administration — made it clear that his presidency was lost.

Dr. Summers, who earned a base salary of $563,000 in the 2004-5 academic year and received a 3 percent raise last July, is to leave office June 30. Derek C. Bok, 75, who was Harvard's president from 1971 to 1991, will serve as interim president until a permanent successor is found.

Hailed in his first days as a once-in-a-century leader, in the mold of perhaps Harvard's greatest president, Charles W. Eliot, Dr. Summers, 51, came into office with plans to expand the campus, put new focus on undergraduate education and integrate the university's schools. But he eventually alienated professors with a personal style that many saw as bullying and arrogant.

His well-known desire to change Harvard's culture, which he saw as complacent, was accompanied by slights to some faculty members and missteps like his statement last year that women might lack an intrinsic aptitude for math and science.

And some of his major decisions — including overhauling the undergraduate curriculum, appointing deans and mapping out a new campus — were hugely divisive at the 370-year-old university.

"I looked at the extent of the rancor that had emerged in parts of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences," Dr. Summers told reporters yesterday, "and the extent to which for many I personally had become a large issue, and concluded very reluctantly that the agenda for the university that I cared about — as well as my own satisfaction — would be best served by stepping down."

Dr. Summers's decision came after three fractious weeks following the resignation of William C. Kirby, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and left the university divided. About 50 students waving signs that said "Stay, Summers, Stay" and chanting "Larry, Larry" rallied in Harvard Yard yesterday after the news broke. Dr. Summers appeared to cheers and dispensed high-fives.

At the same time, several prominent donors said they were aghast at Dr. Summers's fall.

"How can anyone govern a university where a fraction of faculty members can force a president out?" said Joseph O'Donnell, a Boston business executive who is a former member of Harvard's Board of Overseers and a prominent donor.

But several of Dr. Summers's faculty critics — predominantly in the humanities and social sciences, but extended across the university — said the president had made the right decision.

"A strong leader is not just someone who can name a goal or force a change," said Mary C. Waters, a sociology professor, "but someone who can bring out the best in people and find ways to encourage teamwork."

Though Harvard negotiated a university professorship for Dr. Summers — the highest faculty position, with rights to teach in any department — his friends said they did not know if he would take it.

His sabbatical year next year, they said, may be a moment for him to survey his opportunities, including Wall Street or the possibility of advising a Democratic presidential campaign. Several of these people declined to speak on the record because they did not want to be seen as divulging Dr. Summers's thoughts.

But they were also not surprised at how his tenure ended. After last year's dispute over women in science and a no-confidence vote last March by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, several senior Harvard officials close to Dr. Summers wondered whether each faculty meeting would become a moment to rekindle no-confidence votes.

"Win or lose, he realized that it was going to be very difficult to govern and that the better part of valor was to step aside," said David R. Gergen, director of the university's Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Dr. Summers's aides and supporters had tried to find ways to save his presidency before the second no-confidence vote, set for next Tuesday. Dr. Summers also sought ideas from allies including another Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, Robert E. Rubin, who is a member of the seven-seat governing corporation, and Gene B. Sperling, a former economic adviser to Mr. Clinton.

At times Dr. Summers had sounded as if he wanted to fight on, some of his confidants said, but in other moments he sounded weary. By the time he left for a ski vacation in Utah last Thursday, he had decided to resign, two aides said yesterday.

At the same time, corporation members — particularly Nannerl O. Keohane, the former president of Duke University, and Robert D. Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute — began contacting professors to gauge their reaction to a resignation or even a forced dismissal.

Two Harvard faculty members, who spoke with several members of the corporation, said yesterday that they believed it was the corporation's idea, more than Dr. Summers's, that he step down. Members of the corporation did not respond to messages seeking comment. The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that Dr. Summers was expected to resign this week.

Dr. Summers said yesterday that he was not forced to quit, and he sounded enthusiastic about starting new research on international economics after his sabbatical. "In the course of talking with a number of people about what to do," he said, "I of course spoke to members of the corporation, but it was my decision."

While the resignation of Dr. Kirby — and debate over whether he was forced out by Dr. Summers — touched off the current faculty uproar, Dr. Summers's greater problem was the intense ill will and even loathing toward him within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the university's largest unit.

The controversies often became a distraction for administrators who were trying to focus on priorities like planning the next major fund-raising campaign. Still, officials said that annual fund-raising was not down.

Dr. Summers apologized repeatedly for his communication skills, if not for his management. But his remarks about women in the sciences led to last year's 218-to-185 no-confidence vote, and, several professors said, that anger never dissipated.

Professors at the School of Public Health considered a similar vote last year before forgoing one. Dr. Summers also had sharp critics at the Law School and the Graduate School of Education.

"There was no smoking gun, but there were innumerable brush fires," said one critic, Howard Gardner, a professor of cognition and education, referring to the controversies surrounding Dr. Summers.

Since its founding in 1636, Harvard has ceded unusually strong power to its faculties over their different budgets, endowments and perquisites; the presidency, in turn, is designed to be a relatively weak office.

But Dr. Summers enthusiastically filled the bully pulpit. He inveighed against grade inflation and demanded more rigor in teaching, two issues that came up in his private conversation in 2001 with Cornel West, then a professor of African and African-American studies. Dr. West said afterward that he felt insulted by Dr. Summers, and he soon left for Princeton University.

Dr. Summers was more successful with students, who thrilled to the sight of the president's showing up at dances and study breaks, and signing dollar bills that bore his signature as Treasury secretary. In a weekend poll by The Harvard Crimson, the student daily, undergraduates backed him three to one.

Josh Downer, 19, a freshman, who rallied for Dr. Summers yesterday, said he believed that disgruntled faculty had forced him out. "The faculty is throwing a temper tantrum because the president set a bold agenda that doesn't necessarily align with the egos of the faculty," Mr. Downer said.

But to many officials and professors, the rift had become personality-driven, and Dr. Summers had not changed his behavior after promising to do so.

"It's very hard for adults to change their personality, and Harvard needs a personality who can get all the faculty and schools to work together for the good of the university," said Bruce Alberts, a member of Harvard's Board of Overseers.

Dr. Summers also offended some with what many saw as a style more suited to Washington than to Cambridge. He was driven in a black limousine with a license plate reading "1636," the year of Harvard's founding; Dr. Bok, by contrast, had driven his own Volkswagen bus. And Dr. Summers hired his own public relations adviser, who had worked for Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain; she has since departed.

Several professors said they resented the suggestion by Dr. Summers's supporters that he had been forced to resign because the Faculty of Arts and Sciences was simply intransigent.

"For all his extraordinary talents, he just hasn't provided the kind of leadership to the university that people were prepared to follow," said Harry R. Lewis, a professor of computer science and the former dean of Harvard College, who stepped down in 2003 after disagreeing frequently with Dr. Summers.

Other professors said they hoped the next president of Harvard would be no less forceful than Dr. Summers in the cause of the school's agenda.

"I hope people don't conclude from this episode that university presidents must be cautious souls with muted voices," said Michael J. Sandel, a professor of government. "What Harvard needs now is an activist president of bold vision, along with the ability to inspire others to help carry it through."