He’s in the eye of the crimson storm

Harvard has always had more of a reputation than perhaps was good for it. It was the first American college and is now the richest American university. As an institution it takes itself very, very seriously. It is therefore amusing, if not illuminating, to watch the controversy that currently has the place in an uproar.

It is all about its president of 3 1/2 years, economist and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers. The blunt and undiplomatic Summers had already sparked angry words with his remarks on anti-Semitism within the modern left and his dispute with Harvard professor Cornel West, who, offended, left for Princeton. Recently Summers was caught speculating in public on the role, if any, that innate ability plays in the small numbers of women scientists and engineers.

As the story of Summers and his many critics has been bouncing around on television and the newspapers, a new ball has been tossed into the game, Richard Bradley’s book “Harvard Rules.” Bradley, under his given and former name, Richard Blow, became known as author of the worshipful 2002 biography of the late John F. Kennedy Jr., “American Son.” Blow/Bradley, who was executive editor of Kennedy’s magazine, George, is said to have fired two of George’s staffers for violating a confidentiality agreement touching on the late celebrity, then proceeded to ignore his own similar agreement by writing his own book.

“Harvard Rules” violates no confidentiality agreement: It is all about Summers, but Summers wouldn’t talk to Bradley. Neither is the book worshipful. On the contrary, Bradley has looked at everything Summers has done at Harvard and concluded that nearly whatever it was, Summers was wrong and his critics were right.

Summers wants to enlarge the place of science at the university; Bradley darkly hints the humanities are being trashed. Summers wants to expand the school’s presence across the Charles River in Allston; Bradley sees a plot to enlarge the student body and dilute the traditional character of the place. Summers is widely reported to have been chosen by the seven-person governing Harvard Corp. to bring new energy to the presidency; Bradley sees a nasty slap at predecessor Neil L. Rudenstine.

Bradley supposes, on no evidence, that when Summers says he wants something for Harvard, it is his own aggrandizement he is thinking of. For example, Summers has said he wants Harvard’s reach to be global. Bradley translates that this way: “Summers knew that by further extending Harvard’s influence around the world -- and by shaping the content of that influence -- he would extend his status as one of the globe’s most influential citizens.”

It is one of “Harvard Rules’ ” most irritating characteristics that Bradley breezily attributes motives, intentions and beliefs to Summers with no sound attribution of sources. It all seems to be pure speculation.

Summers, however, did not need Bradley’s book to get in such a pickle. He did it all himself. His rambling, often contradictory comments and offhand remarks, his wiseguy image, his appearance of casual arrogance, have all contributed to what is, if less than a major crisis of confidence in the university, more than a tempest in a teapot. Some of the faculty are in open rebellion; there has been talk of votes of no-confidence.

At this point in the controversy, a new look at Summers and his school would have been useful had it had at least a small claim to insight or reliability. Bradley’s “Harvard Rules” has neither. In fact, the author may have succeeded in doing what seemed impossible two months ago: He may have, in his relentless denigration of Harvard’s mouthy new president, turned Larry Summers into a sympathetic figure.

Anthony Day, a regular contributor to Book Review, is a graduate of Harvard College (‘55) and was a Nieman fellow in journalism at Harvard (‘67).