Larry Summers for UC? Who's the next president?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
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<p>I copied the following post off the Harvard Forum on CC. I thought some on the Chicago board might be interested in seeing it. I tried to do a google to pull up the original Viewpoints article at UC, but could not find it. Perhaps idad or someone else knows how to find this paper.</p>

<p>I am assuming this is a suggestion by a student and not a serious proposal being considered by Chicago. Despite the fact that I have some sympathies for Summers, I do not think this is a particularly good idea, given the weight of controversy now surrounding the man and the fact that he had so much trouble communicating with faculty. Anyone else have feelings on this?</p>

<p>On a similar note, does anyone know anything about Chicago's search for a new president? While most applicants don't think much about the fact that Chicago is searching for a new president, it can have a major impact on what happens to the school in the next few years in terms of public perception and quality of education.</p>

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<p>Summers coup is a failure for all
By Alec Brandon
March 7, 2006 in Viewpoints</p>

<p>Many U of C students loath Harvard. It is consistently ranked as one of the top colleges in the nation and universities in the world. It attracts some of the brightest faculty and students. Its endowment is nearly as large as Yale and Stanford’s combined.</p>

<p>But the past year has shown that there is trouble in paradise. Harvard has serious problems—some not unique to Harvard at all. Harvard was graduating entire classes with honors because of rampant grade inflation. Its top-notch professors weren’t teaching. Some weren’t even taking time from their busy schedule of speaking engagements to research or write academic papers. Its undergraduate curriculum was a mess, giving broad distributional credits for undeniably lame classes.</p>

<p>When Larry Summers became president of Harvard, he made it his goal to address these problems. But in his attempt at making the role of a university president more than chief fundraiser he became too much of a threat to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ (FAS) power.</p>

<p>The straw that broke the camel’s back came when Summers edged out the dean of the FAS who was stalling on the necessary curriculum changes. This prompted the FAS to force a second vote of no confidence which could have proven fatal for his presidency. In order to avoid embarrassment, Summers stepped down.</p>

<p>The sad thing throughout this whole ordeal is that Summers has been played as some tactless brute who was just not cut out for the job. Summers’s comments regarding women in science were those of a curious academic—the type of person that ought to be running universities. The dean of the FAS that Summers forced out was roundly disliked until he was fired. The FAS placed him on a pedestal when it realized it could use the event as a way to force a second vote of no confidence.</p>

<p>Perhaps the biggest vote of confidence in Summers—the manager, academic, and reformer—was the fact that he was well regarded by everyone but the FAS. The students, by an overwhelming majority, loved him. He taught freshman seminars and lecture courses. The faculty of the professional schools adored him. And why shouldn’t they, he was making the university a better place for them.</p>

<p>To blame the resignation on any aspect of Summers’s personality is to completely miss the point. In his attempts at reform, he upset the almighty and entirely unaccountable tenured professors of Arts and Sciences. Many did not want the president determining their dean, urging them to do research, or calling them out on their failure to teach. He was forced out because he tried to force reform on a group of tenured professors who wanted none of it.</p>

<p>But Summers’s experience is becoming the norm. Presidents are either frustrated reformers or fundraising figureheads. Not that President Randel is neccesarily one or the other, but it is sad that every press release detailing his success at the U of C focuses on the amount of money he has raised. Whatever happened to university presidents as intellectual lions, like Ezra Cornell, William Rainey Harper, or Robert Maynard Hutchins? Today it seems that too often university presidents choose the path of least resistance. Larry Summers attempted to break that mold, to bring Harvard into the next century; all he got was disgrace and embarrassment.</p>

<p>In the coming months the U of C will be announcing its next president. While we are not a perfect university, we don’t have nearly the same structural problems as Harvard. But still, it doesn’t seem to be asking too much for a president who is willing to do what is necessary to make the curricular reforms the U of C needs, take on lazy and stagnant faculty, and fearlessly make academic inquiry.</p>

<p>Larry Summers anyone?</p>

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<p>Correction. I came up with the original link, by poking around in the Maroon:<a href="http://maroon.uchicago.edu/viewpoints/articles/2006/03/07/summers_coup_is_a_fa.php%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://maroon.uchicago.edu/viewpoints/articles/2006/03/07/summers_coup_is_a_fa.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>"I am assuming this is a suggestion by a student and not a serious proposal being considered by Chicago."</p>

<p>I would guess that this is the case as the Maroon is the student newspaper. </p>

<p>I followed the Summers flap pretty closely last year as Harvard was one of the schools on my son's radar screen (along with the rest of the world). My son and I were both massively underwhelmed by Summers, and it made removing the big H from the list pretty simple. I think he was a factor in Harvard's (slight) applications decline. Maybe he will go to work for FEMA.</p>

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<p>A couple of reasons why Summers won't get a U of C job (aside from the bad PR):</p>

<p>Summers wanted to water down what remains of the Harvard Core. The last president who tried to, and to a certain extent did, change the Core was met by student, faculty, and alumni protests, and eventually left the job.</p>

<p>Though Chicago is much more tolerant of challenging ideas than is Harvard, the faculty have even more say at Chicago, and given Summers' "people skills" it is highly unlikely that the appointment would fly.</p>

<p>I would like to see Chicago do something a little radical like hiring the current Dean of the Humanities Division as President:</p>

<p><a href="http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/040318/allen.shtml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/040318/allen.shtml&lt;/a>
<a href="http://humanities.uchicago.edu/depts/classics/pdf/dallen_cv.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://humanities.uchicago.edu/depts/classics/pdf/dallen_cv.pdf&lt;/a>
<a href="http://www.uchicago.edu/research/jnl-crit-inq/issues/v30/30n2.Allen.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.uchicago.edu/research/jnl-crit-inq/issues/v30/30n2.Allen.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>