After a contentious five-year tenure, Larry Summers announced his resignation as the president of Harvard University last month. His decision ended more than a year of media attention after he suggested biology could be related to women underperforming in the sciences.

The politically incorrect remarks prompted demands for his resignation. Calls came from everywhere from faculty to the National Organization for Women. But one group remained in strong support of the embattled president: his undergraduates.

Amid votes of no-confidence from faculty, undergraduates supported Summers by a 3-to-1 margin, according to a poll taken by The Harvard Crimson right before he announced his resignation. Summers will officially step down in June.

Summers’ thinking went beyond the campus into how the university could be about public good.

‘Summers looked critically at the role of the university in society in a way that no other Harvard president had examined,’ said Matt Meisel, co-chair of The Harvard Crimson’s editorial board.

It’s a philosophy reminiscent of Syracuse University Chancellor Nancy Cantor’s own ‘Soul of Syracuse’ and ‘Scholarship in Action’ campaigns. Cantor said all of these topics revolve around student education.

‘Scholarship in action is entirely about opportunities we provide students to test their knowledge in the real world,’ she said.

Both Summers and Cantor brought definite ideas and directions to their institutions.

Summers made an explicit point to align himself with undergraduates in both policy and appearance; Cantor has faced unrest in what is seen as less focus on undergraduate education, a disconnect with the student population and her decision to disband HillTV.

Unlike Summers, Cantor does not enjoy the same support among undergraduates, at least if you believe Facebook – there are 671 members of anti-Cantor groups. But also unlike Summers, Cantor still has a job.

At Harvard, Summers quickly won the students’ support. He was brought in to ‘shake things up’ at America’s top university. ‘Shake things up’ loosely translated into making the faculty accountable.

‘Harvard students tend to be critical of professors here, and people liked the fact that he was causing trouble,’ said Mike Muhammad, a senior at Harvard.

One of the students-first reforms Summers championed was the fight against grade inflation. When Summers arrived, nearly half of all grades given out were A-s or A-minuses.

Muhammad said he supported Summers in his fight against grade inflation, even though it cost Muhammad personally.

‘I would be an honors graduate if not for that measure, which might not have happened without Summers,’ he said.

Summers is also pushing a curricular review that would add minors, improve advising and revise the core requirements for undergraduates.

‘It’s clear to many students that the faculty doesn’t care about curricular review,’ said Meisel. ‘These are absolutely student-first reforms.’

Summers taught a popular course on globalization and scheduled question and answer sessions with free food every year at every residence hall (Harvard has 17 of them).

On the other hand, Cantor’s interactions with undergraduates have sometimes led to embarrassing results.

During the 2005 Homecoming football game, Cantor took the field to retire the No. 44. She was met by boos from the student section. During the same game, two students were removed from the Carrier Dome after they held up signs reading ‘Dump Cantor’ and ‘Cantor Smells.’ They were met with cheers from spectators.

Though the sign-toting students said the controversy surrounding the chancellor and the former HillTV station was a factor in displaying the signs, it wasn’t the only one.

‘It’s just the whole direction she’s taken the school in,’ said Michael Isserlis, a senior finance major as quoted in the Daily Orange article ‘Public Safety removes 2 students from game’ after the incident. ‘The whole element of the school has changed since we were freshmen.’

Jonathan Smyth, a freshman policy studies major and president of Undergraduates for a Better Education, said while he hears a lot of talk about diversity and community, ‘I don’t hear academics in her speeches.’

Year after year UBE has found the same student complaints about poor advising and frustration with the writing requirements, but the complaints fall on deaf ears, Smyth said.

‘Students are the most oppressed segment of this community,’ said Bill Coplin, director of the policy studies program at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

Coplin said the nature of higher education is not to necessarily make students priority No. 1. Concerns about tenure, publishing and stature come first for many members of the faculty, but it’s a nature not unique to Syracuse. Coplin said former SU Chancellor Kenneth ‘Buzz’ Shaw used what power he had to help steer faculty toward engaging with students.

‘Undergraduates pay 75 cents out of every dollar and get about 25 cents on that dollar back,’ he said. ‘To me, that’s stealing.’

While Shaw plastered the phrase ‘student-centered research university’ throughout SU, it’s a phrase the current administration has disavowed, Coplin said. Not to suggest the university is no longer concerned about undergraduate education, but it signals to faculty it’s no longer the top priority.

Coplin is quick to point out the chancellor can’t exert direct control on how things are run at the professor-to-student level.

‘Faculty members have their fiefdoms, and a university is just hundreds of fiefdoms connected by telephone lines,’ he said.

The breaking up of these fiefdoms was a priority for Summers, who tried to instill more accountability in the School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard.

One prominent example (and one that quickly turned many in the School of Arts and Sciences against him) was a meeting with Cornel West, an African-American studies professor.

The two held a private meeting in fall 2001 in which Summers questioned West’s actions in advising Al Sharpton’s presidential bid, giving out easy A’s in his classes and producing a spoken-word CD. Reportedly, Summers told West to stop missing classes and spend more time on campus.

Meisel said Summers tried to re-evaluate different faculty members’ departments and activities, upsetting those told to change their ways. The problems were only compounded by Summers’ style.

‘He was not only not a very good people person, but a very poor people-person,’ Meisel said.

While the two eventually made up publicly (West nonetheless departed for Princeton University), the incident was one of many that would pit Summers against the Arts and Sciences faculty.

For Cantor (who is also a professor of psychology and women’s studies in The College of Arts and Sciences at SU), getting on the good side of the Arts and Sciences faculty was never a challenge.

‘It’s her baby,’ Smyth said. ‘There’s not the focus on undergrads in Arts and Sciences that there should be.’

The chancellor can use the bully pulpit to direct faculty to her priorities, Coplin said. Priorities that any undergrad would (or at least should) say is undergraduate education.

‘Shaw was like the levees in New Orleans holding the water back,’ Coplin said. ‘She pretty much took the levees away.’

Today the phrase ‘scholarship in action’ is the buzzword that appears across SU’s home page. It’s the title of Cantor’s official vision statement, which is divided into faculty excellence, diverse student population and engagement with downtown/world (in that order).

David Bennett, a Maxwell history professor, cautions while such buzzwords have substance, they’re employed for other reasons.

‘When there are fewer applicants, you need something to market to students to say, ‘Hey, you’re special,” he said.

Maria Russell, a public relations professor at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, said there’s a public relations tactic to help reconnect with students that Cantor could take note of: listen.

‘It sounds so simple, but hearing and listening are two different things,’ she said. ‘Listening takes time; it takes a lot of work.’

But getting a chance to speak to the chancellor isn’t so easy.

‘Superficially at least, President Summers made himself accessible to students,’ Meisel said.

Summers met multiple times during the semester with The Crimson editorial board, student government and other student groups. He sponsored pub nights. Muhammad, the Harvard senior, said a friend of his danced with Summers at a freshman year event.

At SU, students can schedule 20-minute sessions with the chancellor, but an assistant in her office said many of these one-on-one sessions have been consolidated into group sessions because they are in high demand.

These by-appointment office hours are a step up from Cantor’s first year, when no official way existed for students to meet with her.

However, both are steps back from former Chancellor Shaw’s policy of leaving Fridays open for office hours. All members of his cabinet (which include the provost and the four senior vice presidents) kept Friday afternoons open.

Wayne Horton, Student Association president, said a major problem is that ‘students just don’t see the chancellor that much.’

When asked about what Cantor could do to counter the perceptions that she is out-of-touch with undergraduates, Horton was quick to respond: ‘The easy answer: just be seen on campus.’

‘What if Chancellor Cantor just walked into Schine and started having lunch?’ Horton asked. Students could sit down, chat and see her face to face.

‘It’d be cool,’ he said.

Unfortunately, no poll exists to document exactly what kind of support Cantor has (or doesn’t have) on campus. The 14 anti-Cantor groups on Facebook with nearly 700 total members, versus two pro-Cantor groups (‘The Nancy G. Cantor Posse’ is the largest) with 69 members, give some indication.

The critiques range from the valid:’Operation Student Freedom: The Fight Against Cantor’ reads, ‘She gives support to freedom of speech when SHE agrees with what is being said, but suppresses that same freedom when … she doesn’t agree with (it).’

… To the hyperbolic:’Chancellor Cantor, Tear Down This Wall’ compares her to former Soviet Union Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

… To the juvenile:’I Heart Aunt Nancy’ calls her a ‘hobbit woman.’

‘I applaud the opportunity (students have) to express themselves,’ Cantor said in reaction to the groups. ‘There are students busy doing things and people busy talking.’

University Senator Dylan Moore, a senior computer graphics and philosophy major, said there are plenty of avenues the university has to address student concerns.

‘Joining a Facebook group is an MTV response,’ he said, implying that it is not a productive one.

A former HillTV member is the creator of the most popular anti-Cantor group, ‘Our Chancellor Needs to Leave the U.S.’ (210 members and counting). It would be concerning enough that a student feels so negatively about the head of the university as to encourage emigration. But what’s really concerning is that the student is afraid to talk about it.

‘My Facebook group is the one thing I won’t comment on,’ said the student in an e-mail, who asked that her name not be used out of fear that the creation of the group could lead to sanctions from the Office of Judicial Affairs.

‘I think it’s ridiculous that we have to watch what we say on what is just supposed to be a fun student networking site,’ she said.

While emphasizing every encounter with Cantor has been helpful and supportive, Moore expressed dismay at Cantor’s actions with HillTV.

‘She put free speech on the cutting board,’ he said.

Horton said Cantor has been responsive to concerns he’s spoken about with her, but he was also upset by the HillTV decision because she bypassed SA in the process. (Horton was not SA president during the controversy.)

‘In the future we want to gain enough legitimacy with faculty and students that we can be held accountable for major student issues,’ he said, instead of having certain decisions re-routed to upper administration.

Cantor has earned the image of someone who ‘has an agenda and nothing is going to get in her way,’ said Edie Dooley, a sophomore biology and art history major.

Dooley, who created the pro-Cantor Facebook group ‘Hey Nanc!’ said she used to really like the chancellor.

‘I saw her as a strong woman with good ideas,’ Dooley said, but then added she was turned off by how the HillTV situation was handled.

While Dooley had only a brief chance to meet Cantor, freshman Jessica Johnson said she had the opportunity to talk at length with the chancellor at a beginning-of-the-year dinner.

‘She’s an honest and very real person,’ said Johnson, a television, radio and film major.

It’s a common sentiment shared by many students who’ve had the chance to meet or work with Cantor. They praise her community involvement, even if they disagree with her.

Horton said a project he was working on was stalling as he awaited clearances and calls from various parts of the university. He brought the problems to her attention at a University Senate open forum.

‘I got a call the next day,’ he said.

Many of the people interviewed noted that as the head of a university, it’s impossible to please everyone all the time, and certainly to please 12,000-plus undergraduates all the time. But without support of those 12,000 undergraduates, making progress can be tough.

‘All of (the ill feelings) will cloud your agenda,’ said Russell, the public relations professor.

Summers chose his side. It’s why, following his resignation announcement, he was greeted by students wearing ‘Viva Summers!’ T-shirts, with his image in the style of Che Guevara.

Many who have had the chance to meet with Cantor say she has great ideas on how to move Syracuse forward. But as Russell noted, if people don’t like you, ‘people won’t listen to the good (ideas) you have.’

Cantor could listen to the 68 members of ‘Bring Back Buzz’ or the 603 members of other Facebook groups. It’s the route Summers chose.

But then again, Nancy Cantor still has a job. Larry Summers doesn’t.

Published on March 30, 2006 at 12:00 pm