The only black member of Harvard University’s seven-person governing board said Friday he had resigned because he could no longer support the school’s controversial president, Lawrence Summers.
Conrad Harper, a lawyer at New York firm Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett and former legal adviser to the State Department under President Bill Clinton, said he tendered his resignation from the Harvard Corporation in a letter dated July 14.
Summers was criticized earlier this year for suggesting that fewer women were in the fields of math and science due to differences in “intrinsic aptitude.” Earlier he triggered an exodus of professors from the African and African American Studies Department after criticizing a star professor.
“I found myself unable to continue supporting President Summers and resigning was the only thing to do under the circumstances,” Harper said in a telephone interview.
Harper would not elaborate on his disagreements with Summers, who serves an indefinite term as president, and Harvard did not offer any further details.
“I regret that he has chosen, in reflecting on recent matters at the University, to bring his service to a close,” James Houghton, the senior fellow at the corporation, said in a statement.
Harvard’s once-vaunted African and African American Studies Department was shaken after Summers questioned Professor Cornel West’s academic output. West, author of “Race Matters” on race relations in America, left for Princeton University, and other well-known black academics soon left the school.
Corporation backs president
Through it all, the corporation — of which Summers is a member along with Robert Rubin, his predecessor as U.S. Treasury secretary — has expressed its staunch support for the university president.
The Boston Globe, citing a source close to Harvard’s leadership, said Harper has been unhappy with Summers for months and was displeased with the president’s criticism of West and his comments about women.
Harper said he explained his decision in the resignation letter and would not mind it being made public, but left that decision up to the school.
A Harvard official, citing confidentiality, refused to make the letter public.
