SUMMERS: Oh, I think I’ve probably evolved. Most of us do as we get older. I think I’ve learned in my time in Washington that important things are always the work of many people working together.
I’m more interested in globalizing Harvard than in any idea of Americanizing the world through higher education. I do think American uni-versities have had a very positive influence on foreign students. And in important respects, the competitive character of American higher education has had some influence around the world. Certainly, neither within the United States nor around the world is there a single template for higher education.
Harvard’s greatest obligation is to provide the best education it possibly can to all of its students. Brain-drain questions are very difficult, but I’m inclined to think that large parts of the answer lie in countries creating economic environments that lead their most able citizens to return home.
Look, there’s nothing wrong and an enormous amount right with ensuring that resources are there to finance teaching, to finance research. [But] this is a particularly attractive time, given [President Rudenstine’s] success in mobilizing resources.
I don’t think there will ever be a substitute for personal inter-action between a teacher and a learner, and that’s something, particularly in the undergraduate area, that I’ll be trying to promote at Harvard. Of course, the Internet does provide opportunities to extend excellence. The challenge will be to extend that excellence without diluting it.
As I said [earlier], when I make a mistake I make a whopper. I think there was some subsequent commentary clarifying how that mistake came to be made. I don’t have anything more to say now.
I don’t think university presidents have any business in partisan politics, that’s for sure. I think universities–like most institutions–lead better with deeds than with words. Of course, there are issues of concern to university communities and to the nation. And I do think it’s appropriate for universities to speak to such issues if they have something to say that is solidly grounded in the kind of careful thought that universities seek to promote. But universities insist that there not be political interference in their teaching and research agenda. The corollary of that is that universities–as distinct from the scholars who work in them–have to be very careful about political involvement.
Well, I think Nastase was probably playing “client tennis,” in the hope of helping Romania’s negotiations with the IMF. But I play a lot better than you’d expect [from] looking at me.
