It is the richest, most influential, most powerful university in the world, but at the beginning of 2001, Harvard was in crisis. Students complained that a Harvard education had grown mediocre. Professors charged that the university cared more about money than about learning. And everyone worried that Harvard's outgoing president, Neil Rudenstine, epitomized an unhappy trend: the university president as full-time fund-raiser. Harvard may have possessed a $19 billion endowment, but had the university lost its soul?

The members of the Harvard Corporation, the ultra-secretive governing board established more than three centuries ago, knew that they had to act. And so they made a bold pick for Harvard's twenty-seventh president: former Treasury Secretary and intellectual prodigy economist Lawrence Summers.

Although famously brilliant, Summers was a high-stakes gamble. In the 1990s he had crafted American policies to stabilize the global economy, quietly becoming one of the world's most powerful men. But while many admired Summers, his critics called him elitist, imperialist, and arrogant beyond measure.

Today Larry Summers sits atop a university in a state of upheaval, unsure of what it stands for and where it is going. His allies believe that Harvard needs shaking up and appreciate Summer's blunt language and unabashed displays of power. His foes accuse the new president of tearing apart a venerable institution simply to remake it in his own image. At stake is not just the future of Harvard University, but the way in which Harvard students see the world — and the manner in which they will lead it.

Written despite the university's official opposition, Harvard Rules uncovers what really goes on behind Harvard's storied walls — the politics, sex, ambition, infighting, and intrigue that run rampant within the world's most important university.

"In an attempt to place Harvard's current president, Larry Summers, in historical perspective, this intriguing study explores his policies, leadership style and previous career in reference to other presidents as far back as Charles W. Eliot (president from 1869-1909). Bradley, author of the bestselling American Son: A Portrait of John F. Kennedy, writes with tactful reserve about the backroom intrigues and infighting that have characterized Summer's presidency, always showing both sides of the issues-and the book is no less gripping for it. These struggles, involving such luminaries as Cornel West, Skip Gates, Robert Rubin and Alan Dershowitz, are riveting even when handled with kid gloves. But Bradley addresses much more than simply the contentious start to Summer's tenure at Harvard. On the one hand, he offers an insightful look at how the role of the American university president has changed from a moral and intellectual leader independent of political and corporate power to the administrator of an institution largely dependent on corporate and government largesse for its continued existence. On the other, he places Harvard's development and growth in a larger context, exploring its shifting goals, pedagogy and values in reference to other prestigious American universities such as Princeton, Stanford and Yale, as well as to American society in general. On a whole host of issues-including unionization, civil rights, affirmative action and militarism-Bradley uses events at Harvard to illuminate wider social trends and vice versa. Although Harvard alums will naturally gravitate toward this timely volume, it will also appeal to anyone concerned with the evolving relationship between higher education and American society." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Under the presidency of former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, Harvard University, has been embroiled in controversies that have spilled over the ivy-covered walls of the campus and onto the front pages of the American newspapers. In this work, Bradley (former executive editor of George magazine) exposes the inside politics that have roiled the Harvard campus during Summers' tenure, addressing the reasons the Harvard Corporation picked Summers for the job, conflicts between Summers and African American studies professors Henry Louis Gates and Cornel West, and various other academic controversies.
Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Under the presidency of former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, Harvard University, has been embroiled in controversies that have spilled over the ivy-covered walls of the campus and onto the front pages of the American newspapers. In this work, Bradley (former executive editor of George magazine) exposes the inside politics that have roiled the Harvard campus during Summers' tenure, addressing the reasons the Harvard Corporation picked Summers for the job, conflicts between Summers and African American studies professors Henry Louis Gates and Cornel West, and various other academic controversies. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

"Bradley chronicles the West-Gates-Summers battle royal in detail that'ssometimes delicious and sometimes, well, mind-numbing....It's a fluid, solid profile but would have been better as a magazine article." Kirkus Reviews

An investigation of one of the world's most powerful institutions is seen through the prism of Lawrence Summers' embattled tenure as president of Harvard. 8-page photo insert.

The former executive editor of George magazine, Richard Bradley is the author of the number one New York Times bestseller American Son: A Portrait of John F. Kennedy, Jr. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, and the New Republic. A graduate of Yale College who received his A.M. in American history from Harvard, Bradley lives in New York City.