Lawrence Summers resigns as Harvard president

Summers, who served as Clinton’s treasury secretary before taking the helm at Harvard, announced on February 21 that he will resign at the end of the current school year. The decision came on the eve of a “no confidence” vote called by the faculty and amid widespread demands within the university for him to step down.

The Wall Street Journal lamented the fall of an individual who, during his eight years in the Clinton administration, had identified himself fully with the interests of American corporations and financial institutions. The Journal’s right-wing editorial board portrayed him as the victim of a “largely left-wing faculty that has about as much intellectual diversity as the Pyongyang parliament.”

The ostensibly more liberal Washington Post published an editorial with the provocative title, “Prejudice Wins.” It referred to the university faculty’s “complaints that he was acting like a corporate chief executive—as though there were something wrong with that.” The paper warned, “Because of the prestige of Harvard, his defeat may demoralize reformers at other universities.”

Even the Financial Times of Britain weighed in with a mournful editorial entitled “Larry Summers Concedes to his Foes.” The voice of the City of London praised him for “challenging established fiefdoms and implementing uncomfortable changes,” while declaring his “blunt style of management” a “virtue” necessary for pursuing such a struggle.

The reaction indicates that the departure of Summers represents for decisive sections of the ruling elite, in the US and beyond, a significant setback. Clearly, major political issues are involved in the so-called “reforms” and “uncomfortable changes” that these forces deem to be necessary in American academia.

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/feb2006/summ-f24.shtml