March 21 Update: The dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, announced that she will leave that post on June 30, after just three years of service, to return to teaching and research.
March 16, 2005
At its regularly scheduled meeting on March 15, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences registered by a formal vote that it “lacks confidence in the leadership of Lawrence H. Summers,” Harvard’s president since July 2001. Harvard Magazine presents here an on-line news report of these events, parallel to its on-line reports of the February 15 and 22 faculty meetings (see below), where these issues were first discussed. Compared to the earlier meetings, fewer faculty members spoke from prepared texts on March 15. All were asked to forward their remarks; texts as received are posted here.
For readers who desire background for press accounts of 1) President Summers's remarks on women in the sciences and engineering, and 2) tensions between the president and members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, we provide here:
- a link to the transcript (released February 17) of the president’s remarks at the January forum: [link] and a letter from the president to the faculty about those remarks: [link]
- a link to the text of a February 17 letter to the Harvard community from James Houghton, Senior Fellow of the Harvard Corporation, touching on the two previous items: https://www.news.harvard.edu/corporation/houghton.html
- a link to the text of a March 4 letter from the School of Public Health’s Faculty Council to President Summers concerning “serious issues that have been raised within our University during the past several weeks”: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/faculty_council/summers_letter.html
Two articles in the current March-April issue "Gender Gap" and "Women and Tenure" may also further understanding of the events.
