Harvard President May Face No Confidence Vote

The governing board of Harvard University is considering asking its beleaguered president, Lawrence Summers, to step down ahead of a no confidence vote scheduled for next week, according to reports over the weekend.

Mr. Summers’ presidency has been marked by a series of high profile resignations by staff unhappy with his leadership style. He also caused controversy last year by suggesting that women lag behind men in the sciences because of biological differences.

A number of US newspapers report that professors at Harvard want the university to take action against Mr Summers - asking him to either resign or face the sack - to save the embarrassment of a second no confidence vote by the faculty of arts and science next Tuesday.

Next week’s vote is predicted to pass with a larger majority than the one held last March, which was passed by 218 to 185 votes.

The Boston Globe said academics predicted next week’s meeting would be a "bloodbath", with even more heated attacks on the president than before.

Although the no confidence vote is a symbolic gesture, the university’s governing board, which decides Mr. Summers’ fate, is believed to be warming to academics’ concerns about the president’s leadership style.

Governors are understood to be considering "all options" to end the tension between Mr Summers and staff, which has built up over the last five years and detracted from the university’s ambitious expansion plans.

According to the Globe, a senior official who spoke to members of the board said "it would be hard not to have the inference" that the board was considering firing Mr Summers.

Mr. Summers’ tenure at Harvard, which began in 2001, has been dogged with controversy. His combative style of leadership has done little to endear him to staff, and there have been several high profile resignations during his presidency.

Cornel West, professor of African-American studies, left Harvard for Princeton in 2002, and last month William C Kirby stepped down as dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, although he remains at the university.

The former dean of Harvard’s graduate school of arts and sciences, Peter T Ellison, told the Globe that he announced his resignation a year ago because the president undermined his authority and broke promises.

But it was Mr Summers’ comments at a conference last January that sparked the biggest wave of anger among staff and the wider academic community.

Mr Summers speculated that women lag behind men in the sciences and engineering because of biological differences and gave little credence to the idea that women suffered discrimination when applying for academic posts.

He has since apologized for the comments and the university has announced new efforts to encourage more women scientists.

Harvard would not comment on the governing board’s discussions and neither would Mr Summers’ spokesman.

The president does, however, have the support of some of the student body. A poll published in the Harvard Crimson paper today found that the vast majority of students want him to stay.