Leading in Harvard Yard and on College Walk

Lee C. Bollinger and Lawrence H. Summers have a lot in common. But in a few months, only one of them will be the president of an Ivy League university.

In 2001, Bollinger was passed over for the presidency of Harvard University in favor of Summers. After only five years on the job, and several bruising battles with his university's faculty, Summers resigned last week. Bollinger, meanwhile, seems to have weathered the biggest storm of his presidency.

The two men share several points of comparison. Both modeled themselves as dynamic leaders with strong visions for their respective universities, and both faced questions about expanding into neighboring communities and increasing faculty diversity. But, while the Harvard faculty voted no confidence in Summers last year and planned another vote for this week, Bollinger has avoided such widespread doubts in his administration.

As at Harvard, a series of high-profile incidents involving faculty and students has shaken Columbia's central administration from the beginning of Bollinger's tenure nearly four years ago. In 2003, controversy erupted when Associate Professor of Latino/a Studies and Anthropology Nicholas De Genova said during an anti-war teach-in that he wished for "a million Mogadishus." Tensions escalated during the spring 2004 protests against systemic racism at Columbia and peaked last year during the debates about the Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures department.

Both University Provost Alan Brinkley and Vice President for Arts and Sciences Nicholas Dirks said that they think that Bollinger, unlike Summers, survived such controversies thanks to his attempts to reach out to the faculty.

"My sense is that he has been working very hard to both meet faculty in collective ways and also meet them in individual ways," Dirks said. "He has, I think, made himself as available as he can to talk with faculty in a variety of different contexts."

Brinkley added that he thinks Bollinger understands the need for support from the faculty in bringing about his long-term plans for Columbia.

"Although he's had some bumpy moments with the faculty, I think, on the whole, he's been very attentive to faculty opinion, and he's worked very hard to learn what the faculty think, to get their views of what he's doing, to make sure he's not getting ahead of the community," Brinkley said. His leadership style is very different from that of Summers. "I don't think anyone at Columbia, whatever else they think of President Bollinger, would argue that he is anything but kind and civil and tolerant when he deals with his colleagues at the University," he said.

Criticism of Bollinger reached its high point during the controversy within the MEALAC department, when students and faculty questioned his support for the professors and for academic freedom. He defended the University against media criticism, and also backed an ad hoc committee whose members were charged with bias and led the University while international media scrutinized it. Professor George Saliba, one of the faculty members whose classroom conduct was targeted in the David Project's documentary about MEALAC, said that the department continues to feel the "debilitating repercussions" of Bollinger's actions.

"President Bollinger's handling of the Columbia MEALAC affair was either a result of incompetence or of malicious intent, and in both cases it was a disaster," Saliba wrote in an e-mail. He added that Bollinger's policy "did not protect the department firmly enough in order to put an end to such rumor-mongering and witch-hunting that continues to flourish."

In an interview with Spectator in September, Bollinger said that the challenge for the administration at the time was to balance responding to depictions of Columbia in the national media, prioritizing serious accusations of misconduct, and supporting freedom of speech.

"That controversy put enormous stresses on the institution, and it withstood those stresses," Bollinger said. "I think there is a yearning for a community, a sense of community, and we should respond to that, and I think we have responded to it."

Dirks said that he thought Bollinger is still in a strong position because he actively reached out to faculty to clarify his position on the issues.

"I think he was taken aback when some faculty felt that he wasn't sufficiently attentive to their concerns around [academic freedom] because it's in his blood, so I think he needed to communicate better to the faculty at certain points," Dirks said. "The reason he weathered the crisis so well was that ... he began to make clear to the faculty that he had not changed any of his commitments."

Brinkley acknowledged that many faculty members were unhappy with the way that the central administration handled the situation, and that mistakes were made at the time, but that Bollinger was sensitive to the needs of students and professors.

"I do think that President Bollinger understood very early that it was as important to maintain the confidence of the faculty as it was to respond effectively to criticism of the University from outside," he said.

Additionally, he added that the crisis at Harvard started through Summers' own statements, whereas the MEALAC situation was not created by anyone in the central administration. The vote of no confidence in Summers last March was precipitated by his now-famous remarks about the possibility that "intrinsic aptitude" may play a role in the under-representation of women in the sciences. One of the most significant issues that Bollinger has grappled with during his time in office is the charge of the existence of systemic racism at Columbia.

Graciela Chichilnisky, a professor in the economics department, has been involved in a lengthy legal battle with Columbia over charges of gender discrimination. She said that she suspects that Bollinger holds many of the same stereotypes about women in the sciences as Summers.

"At the time, I was in a state of disbelief because I though the statement was a disconnect intellectually, [but] later on through my work, I learned that he was really representing [commonly held] stereotypes," Chichilnisky said. "I perceive also a fundamental disconnect in Bollinger's administration, similar to the disconnect that led Larry to make those statements."

Chichilnisky said she believes both Bollinger and Summers have good intentions, but she disputed the characterization of Bollinger as a "champion of diversity"-a claim frequently advanced based on his defense of affirmative action at the University of Michigan-because of a lack of action on his part "to address the systemic problems that we face."

In the arena of diversity, the charge that Bollinger is more rhetoric than action is common in some sectors of the faculty and student body. Similarly, one of the first challenges Summers faced at Harvard was a public battle with Cornel West, who eventually left for Princeton. Nell Geiser, CC '06 and a critic of Columbia's proposed Manhattanville expansion, said that she does not see a commitment on Bollinger's part to taking action on students' concerns about expansion and racial diversity on campus.

But Jean Howard, vice provost for diversity initiatives, said that Bollinger has shown a commitment to increased faculty diversity, most notably in his pledge of $15 million for recruitment.

"Bollinger's whole career has been devoted to inclusiveness in higher education, [and] I think we're very lucky to have him as our leader at this time," Howard said. "I consider myself to be lucky to be working with an administration of this sort."

Following Summers' resignation, some students and faculty began wondering if Bollinger would again consider trying for Harvard's top job. Yesterday's Chronicle of Higher Education, which featured a long article on Summers, supplied a "short list" of six likely candidates for the job, including Bollinger. But both Dirks and Brinkley expressed their feeling that Bollinger is committed to Columbia. He addressed the question directly when asked at Friday's University Senate meeting.

"That chapter of my life is completely over," Bollinger said. "I love being here, [and] this is where I intend to stay."