CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Lawrence H. Summers has announced
that he will resign as president of Harvard University
at the end of the 2005-06 academic year, the school
announced on its Web site.
Summers became Harvard's 27th president after Neil L.
Rudenstine announced in May 2001 his resignation after
nearly a decade. Summer's resignation ends the
briefest tenure of any Harvard president since 1862,
when Cornelius Felton died after two years in office.
As Harvard's president, Summers, a former U.S.
Treasury secretary in the Clinton Administration, on
several occasions made comments that drew intense
criticism.
Last year he suggested that innate gender differences
between the sexes that might explain the few women in
science and math.
The talk prompted a 218-185 no confidence vote from
Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences last March.
Faculty votes are symbolic because the seven-member
Harvard Corporation has sole authority to fire the
university's president.
Another no confidence vote was scheduled for Feb. 28.
Derek Bok, Harvard's president from 1971 to 1991, will
serve as interim president of the University from July
1 until the conclusion of the search for a new president.