‘The Best Day Higher Ed Has Had in a Year’

In the hours after Columbia University’s deal with the Trump administration became public, many academics worried about the precedent it set. Lawrence H. Summers, a former president of Harvard who left office in 2006, had a different take. The deal, he wrote in an early morning social-media post, was “an excellent template for agreements with other institutions, including Harvard.”

“This may be the best day higher education has had in the last year,” he wrote.

Columbia and the Trump Administration

• Columbia’s Deal With Trump Stokes Fears of Federal Admissions Audits
• Columbia Struck a Deal to Save Research Funding. How Do Its Researchers Feel About That?
• Tucked Into Columbia’s Deal With Trump: A Restriction on International Enrollments
• What Columbia Just Threw Away
• The Art of the Deal Comes to Columbia

Summers has been very public about how he thinks Harvard should proceed in its conflicts with the Trump administration. Notably, in April, he wrote that “the U.S. government is trying to bludgeon America’s elite universities into submission” and argued that funding threats “must be resisted using all available legal means.” He called Columbia’s response at that time “capitulation.” More recently, however, he’s said that the “vast majority” of the Harvard community wants to see an end to the fight. Even if he doesn’t want to see the government dictate what Harvard does, he is happy to see its central administration take greater control over university functions.

We spoke to Summers on Thursday evening. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Why would a deal similar to Columbia’s be good for Harvard?

A deal in which the government will not be involved in faculty appointments or setting curriculum or choosing particular students, but will expect that the law be complied with; a deal that respects academic freedom and that restores normality; a deal that is heavily based on things that are good to do, anyway — correcting antisemitism, moving towards ideological diversity, and the celebration of excellence — I believe that is a desirable thing.

The Columbia deal talks about, for example, appointing some new faculty leaders and reviewing the regional studies departments. When you say a deal should protect academic autonomy, what counts as sufficient protection?

That the central part of the university is going to take increased responsibility for all that takes place in the university seems, to me, very desirable.

Most universities have ongoing processes for reviewing centers and academic units, and they recognize the obligation of university leaders to review components. Most universities, including Harvard, have principles that the prestige of the university is not to be arrogated by faculty members in support of any set of political convictions, particularly those in leadership positions of academic units.

I’ve believed for 20 years that discipline should be centralized with respect to these kinds of protests, and so I was glad when Harvard took that step. I wish it had not taken everything that happened to get Harvard to take that step.

I think that decisions about what kinds of foreign funds are going to be accepted should not be made by people whose work is going to be the beneficiaries of those gifts, but should be made by independent people in a university central administration.

Now, there are some who believe that those things should be subject to government diktat and that is self-evidently wrong. It’s not the government’s job to decide who’s a good economics professor and who’s a bad economics professor. It’s not the government’s job to decide how much emphasis there’s going to be on Keynesian economics and how much emphasis there’s going to be on classical economics. But the notion that university administrations need to take responsibility for what happens throughout their universities is one that I have very much resonated with for a very long time.

In op-eds and comments you’ve warned about the dangers of capitulation, arguing that Harvard should stand up to the Trump administration. Why has your view changed?

My view was that the university can’t accept the principle that some outsider gets to dictate what it is that is in the curriculum or who it is that is hired. My view is, and continues to be, that where there is inappropriate process, as I think very clearly there has been, in the way that the funds have been cut off, it’s appropriate to mount legal challenges, and I’ve been proud of the legal challenges that Harvard has mounted. But I never have suggested that somehow the best state is to be in a continuous war with the government of your country.

Harvard exists to educate students and to advance knowledge, and it can’t cross lines of fundamental principle. But it’s important to be pragmatic about trying to find a way back to normality, for the sake of students who would otherwise lose the opportunity to study, for the sake of research that will otherwise go undone. My mantra has been: resist and reform. You have to resist what clearly has been authoritarian overreach. At the same time, the university has to be prepared to reform, and has to be pragmatic about recognizing the laws and the regulatory authorities of those in the government.

Universities need to remember that they are, in a sense, institutional citizens of the United States.

What you’re saying about returning to normalcy, about not having this protracted conflict with the U.S. government, have your views on that sharpened over the last four months?

I’ve been surprised by how far outside of American tradition the Trump administration has gone — surprised and profoundly disturbed. As someone who’s worked in government, I’m very much aware of the power that government has. But I have been surprised by the ways in which they have used that power. My view is that there’s a substantial amount that Harvard needs to do, quite apart from any pressure from the government, that is responsive to these concerns. And I think Harvard should do those things, not because the government’s pressuring them to do it, but because they’re the right things to do. If Harvard is able to do those things, then there’s at least a prospect of being able to reach a reasonable agreement.

You’ve been relatively outspoken on this in a way that Alan Garber cannot or maybe shouldn’t be. How do you see your role as a former president in bringing this situation to a resolution?

I’ve got huge respect for Alan Garber. I’ve known him for close to 50 years, since we were new graduate students together at Harvard in the mid-'70s. I have always known him as a person of great intelligence and great integrity and character, and I have been so impressed by the way he has emerged as a leader over the last year. My view — which, frankly, would not have been my view two years or five years or maybe 10 years after the time that I was president — is that I have returned to the faculty and been a faculty member for sufficiently long that, I think of myself never as speaking on behalf of the institution, but as speaking as a faculty member who’s had a range of experiences in life, and I try to always be clear that I’m speaking on my own behalf and not speaking on behalf of the institution. Insofar as I have any knowledge — which I occasionally do, not normally, not now — of what official plans are, that’s not something I ever talk about publicly. I simply try to share my views on issues that I feel strongly about.

So you don’t see yourself as having a role in trying to shape an outcome, to bring some resolution?

Anyone who participates in a debate and tries to lay out points of view hopes that their point of view will influence others and will influence the outcome. But I don’t see myself as an intermediary or as a mediator or as a representative. I see myself as a person who has thought a lot about many of the questions involved, and who’s sharing his opinions.

Have you gotten any feedback from Garber on your opinions?

Alan and I don’t talk frequently, but we talk from time to time. They’ve been warm, honest conversations. Certainly there wouldn’t ever be anything that I would ever share with the press.

You spoke about the importance of being pragmatic. Some critics of the Columbia deal see this as regulation by extortion. As you alluded to, the Trump administration cut off congressionally appropriated funds; they didn’t follow the congressionally mandated procedures for doing so. Now they’ve won concessions from Columbia, and might do the same with Harvard. Do you see peril in the precedent, even if you agree with some of the specific reforms covered in the deal?

I wish that the administration was not on the trajectory that it is. I deplore the vast majority of its methods, and I deplore a number of its objectives. If it were feasible to file an appeal and three months later have the problems all go away because of a court order, that might be an attractive strategy. But I would be very surprised if, given the range of tools that were available to the government, given the climate of the current judiciary, that is a feasible strategy. The ultimate mission of a university has to be education and carrying out research, and those objectives are best served by being prepared to explore whether a negotiated agreement is possible.

This is an extraordinary and a unique situation because of the degree of overreach, but this is not something that only happens with universities. Other institutions — companies, hospitals, local governments — have found themselves in conflict with the federal government, and they have to make a judgment about the best way forward, and sometimes the best way forward is a negotiated agreement.

Fair to say that your pragmatism is in large part born out of a kind of a clear-eyed recognition of the limits of higher ed’s power to defend itself? Have your views on that shifted?

No. I’ve always thought that it’s appropriate for any institution engaged in a conflict with its government to seek to be both principled and pragmatic. I don’t think you can choose one course or the other. Responsible leaders have to be aware of research projects that are going to be discontinued, students whose career paths are going to be ruined. So it’s easy to want to go to the rhetorical barricade if you don’t have responsibility for what ultimately happens to the people in the community that you are leading. That’s why I think that it is a very fine balance that has to be struck.

There was a famous moment when Yitzhak Rabin was asked why he shook hands with Yasser Arafat, and he responded by saying that you don’t make peace with your friends. Trying to reach an agreement here is trying to act in the best possible way on behalf of profoundly important values. At the same time, there have to be red lines. I am very much aware that the devil is in the details. When one uses the term “monitoring,” what exactly is a monitor going to do, what exactly are the authorities of the monitor? When I salute the Columbia agreement, what I’m saluting is normality; is a return to normality; is the commitment that does appear there to the basic and core notions of academic freedom. I recognized in my tweet that there would be elements of the agreement that might not be the elements that I would have selected. There are points where I might have resisted. But one has to recognize that choices have to be made, and balances have to be struck. Since October 7 and everything that has happened, I have tried to be pragmatic in recognizing that universities have an obligation to resist antisemitic enthusiasm for terror in the way that they have historically resisted racism. At the same time, there are free-speech rights that need to be maintained. It’s a very challenging set of balances that have to be struck.

What are the red lines Harvard should not cross in any potential deal?

No right of government approval or rejection of any personnel choice, whether it is a faculty member, an individual admissions decision, or an appointment within the university to any kind of academic position. That the government does not get to dictate what’s going to be taught in any particular class or what the expectation of any major is going to be. That the government is not going to be able to declare what kinds of speech will be punished. Those would be some of the key red lines that I see.

You put your tweet up at 7 a.m. Have you heard much response, or has it not been that much?

I don’t spend my time watching responses to my tweets.

What about people within your social circle?

There are people who are more enthusiastic about confrontation, and [other] people who are more enthusiastic about conciliation. My view is that if you have a position and some people are telling you that you should move upwards, and some people are telling you that you should move downwards, that’s a sign that the place where you are is somewhat right. If everyone is telling you that you should move in the same direction, then you wonder whether you are not in the right place.