Lawrence Summers

Lawrence Summers is an American economist who served as President of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006. Summers also served as the Secretary of the Treasury for the last year and a half of the Clinton administration.

Fast Facts:

1. Full name: Lawrence Henry "Larry" Summers
2. Born: November 30, 1954 in New Haven, Connecticut
3. Youngest tenured professor in Harvard's history in 1983
4. Chief Economist at the World Bank from 1991 to 1993
5. 1993 recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal for his work in macroeconomics
6. 27th President of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006
7. Married Harvard English professor Elisa New in December 2005
8. Vigorous proponent of Free Trade and Globalization

Brief Background

Born to two University of Pennsylvania economists, Summers entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the age of 16. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard in 1982, and the next year became a full, tenured professor at the institution, the youngest individual to have ever secured such a position. In the 1990s, Summers served as Chief Economist of the World Bank before becoming Secretary of the Treasury in the latter days of the Clinton Administration, succeeding Robert Rubin.

Controversy

Upon taking the reins at Harvard, Summers immediately stoked controversy by criticizing African-American Studies professor and author Cornel West in a private meeting by accusing him of missing too many classes, and not publishing relevant scholarship. West eventually left Harvard to return to his former employer, Princeton University. In 2005, Summers again came under fire, this time for suggesting that men's innate abilities explained the higher proportion of men in engineering and science programs. After the Harvard faculty passed a no-confidence vote concerning Summers, the economist stepped down from his post at the beginning of 2006.

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