{"id":91,"date":"2003-08-26T15:08:22","date_gmt":"2003-08-26T19:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/2003\/08\/26\/love-is-in-the-air\/"},"modified":"2003-08-26T15:08:22","modified_gmt":"2003-08-26T19:08:22","slug":"love-is-in-the-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/2003\/08\/26\/love-is-in-the-air\/","title":{"rendered":"Love is in the air&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a42'><\/a><\/p>\n<p><i><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Even if Summers were a guileful and calculating figure with a hidden agenda of drastic change, he would have a tough row to hoe. But he&#8217;s not: he&#8217;s a blunt and overbearing figure with an overt agenda of drastic change. It should come as no surprise that Larry Summers is not quite as popular a figure as his gracious predecessor was. One of Summers&#8217;s oldest friends on the faculty said to me: &#8221;There are a lot of people on other parts of the campus I&#8217;ve met who just despise him. The level of the intensity of their dislike for him is just shocking.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>\nI met professors who so thoroughly loathe the new president that they refuse even to grant his intelligence, perhaps because doing so would confer upon him a virtue treasured at Harvard. Despite the protections of tenure, virtually all of Summers&#8217;s critics were too afraid of him to be willing to be quoted by name. It&#8217;s not easy to imagine Summers winning these people over. Of course, he may not have to. Harvard&#8217;s greatest presidents have been an exceptionally cold and nasty lot. One of them, Charles W. Eliot, once said that the most important attribute of a college president is the capacity to inflict pain.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\nLargo, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2003\/08\/24\/magazine\/24SUMMERS.html?ex=1377057600&amp;en=ad07c27697972a5b&amp;ei=5007&amp;partner=USERLAND\">largu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Even if Summers were a guileful and calculating figure with a hidden agenda of drastic change, he would have a tough row to hoe. But he&#8217;s not: he&#8217;s a blunt and overbearing figure with an overt agenda of drastic change. It should come as no surprise that Larry Summers is not quite as popular a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":240,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1458],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ionstories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/240"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}