OCTOBER 12, CAMBRIDGE — There’s a new noise in Harvard Square today. If you listen carefully, you can just catch it above the hum of traffic: muffled applause — the sound of a thousand backs being clapped. " Robert! " Clap-clap. " Bob! " Clap-clap-clap. There are a lot of Bobs in Cambridge today. They grip each other’s elbows and pump each other’s arms and wear big-money grins. Many have Harvard neckties sloping over their stomachs. Almost all sport dark blazers. You’ve never seen so many distinguished-looking people. You can practically smell the leather interiors on them.
The Bobs (and their wives, the Elizabeths) are in town to witness " a rare and extraordinary event " : the installation of new Harvard president Lawrence H. Summers. Harvard’s 27th president in 365 years, Summers, 46, was handpicked by a special committee following a nine-month search. He is widely considered to be the right man for the job. Not least because he is a Harvard Man.
Though Summers earned his bachelor’s degree at MIT (in 1975), he received a doctorate in economics from Harvard in ’82, and in 1983 he became one of the youngest tenured professors in the school’s history when he took the post of Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy. In 1991, he left Harvard and went to Washington, taking on a leading role at the World Bank. In 1993, he joined the Treasury Department, and six years later he was named secretary of the Treasury. While at the Treasury, Summers became one of President Clinton’s most trusted advisers — not to mention a frequent tennis partner of Alan Greenspan.
Summers is the local boy made good — the local boy made bloody great, in fact. Anything less than this would’ve been a disappointment. Summers was born into a family of financial wizards. His mother and father were economics professors, and two of his uncles — MIT’s Paul Samuelson and Stanford University’s Kenneth Arrow — are Nobel laureates in economics. Summers is the consummate overachiever, an inveterate smarty-pants. And he’ll have to be to take on this job.
On this dazzlingly sunny fall day, the throngs of distinguished visitors have been joined in Harvard Square by about 150 student demonstrators, who are here to ask why a university with an $18.3 billion endowment is paying some of its workers as little as $7 an hour. " Hey, Harvard, use that cash, " they chant. " Why do you pay your workers trash? " But it’s a small blot on an otherwise rare and extraordinary occasion.
A HARVARD installation is supposed to be as close to a coronation as America gets. A simple ceremony back in the no-fuss 1600s, it has since evolved into elaborate theater. It’s noontime now, and by two o’clock Harvard Yard will be awash in the colorful trappings of academia: the signifying sashes, tassels, robes, and hats of ancient design, the banners and brass bands. The installation itself will involve the handing over of a flea market’s worth of symbolic doodads, including, but not limited to, a set of ceremonial keys, a silver service, a framed facsimile of the Harvard Charter, and the President’s Chair, an uncomfortable-looking triangular object that was given to the college by Edward Holyoke in the 18th century.
Already, you can feel the gravity of the occasion. Three immense (and rather Nuremberg-like) red banners bearing the Harvard insignia flap outside the entrance to Widener Library, an imposing edifice that overlooks the site of the proceedings. Nearby, a Harvard choir belts out a few bars of " America the Beautiful " before being cut off by the conductor: " Let’s try to keep the sea shining all the way through — in tune. " These kids look much like the ones demonstrating outside the Yard — a mass of rosy, naive, hope-filled faces. At one point, they hit a note so devastatingly beautiful that the small knot of people who have gathered to watch break into spontaneous applause. Even the conductor softens: " You almost deserved that. "
Meanwhile, in a marquee set up just outside the Harvard Science Center, the Bobs and Elizabeths are sitting down to eat grilled chicken, sip white wine, and chatter. From the outside (the press is not invited), the luncheon sounds like a thousand geese being tickled to death. A few journalists skulk around the perimeter of the tent, no doubt contemplating Au Bon Pain’s chicken sandwiches. Actual Harvard students are kept at an even greater distance. The entire area has been cordoned off by metal barriers. Cambridge and university police officers stand by to ensure that no one gets any closer than credentials allow.
Inside the Science Center, the morning has gone by in a series of symposia, in which high-end thinkers discussed topics such as " The Professional Ethic Meets the Market Economy " and " Brain Science and the Science of Learning. " Psychology professor and author Steven Pinker was there, as was IMF bigwig Stanley Fischer, famed naturalist Edward O. Wilson, US Court of Appeals judge Richard Posner, and many, many more. In the lobby, a continental breakfast was provided, complete with urns of piping-hot coffee. " I am not, " I thought, " drinking that fucking coffee. " Instead I opted for bottled juice — and even then I listened closely for the reassuring pop of the screw-top cap.
Powdered doughnut, anyone?
The night before the installation, President Bush held a press conference to say, in effect, " Duck! " There was talk of an inevitable terrorist attack — but no one seemed to know where or when it would take place. I do. As I sit and kill the couple of hours between lunch and the ceremony, I browse through the list of attendees. It seems every president from every university in America is here. Isn’t it obvious? The terrorists hit our financial and military institutions on September 11; if they want to throw our academic world into turmoil, this would be the time and the place to do it.
AS I sit and consider this fact, a fellow journalist informs me that a case of anthrax has been reported in New York. Bad. Bad. Bad. I scan the faces around me — not a flinch, not a hint of jitters. Even the cops look relaxed. Are they nuts? Suddenly, this whole ceremony thing is beginning to seem absurd. There are entire platoons of HUPD officers on duty today. But these Harvard cops, as professional and dedicated as they may be, are surely more apt at telling students to turn their damn stereos down than they are at coping with a biological attack. And don’t talk to me about those so-called barriers. Those barriers wouldn’t stop a determined octogenarian, let alone a highly trained, highly motivated killer.
Okay, calm down. Go and look at the funny costumes in the Yard.
It’s 1:30 p.m., and the hundreds of dignitaries due to take part in an " academic procession " are milling around, being organized into various brightly colored clumps: faculty, deans, clergy, presidents. Within a few seconds I have spotted Skip Gates, Robert Brustein, and Peter Gomes. But it’s the outfits that are the real stars of the show today. I doubt there have been this many flamboyant gowns in the same place since the American Ballroom Championships.
Everything about each of these elaborate get-ups signifies something about its wearer: gray means MIT, crimson means Harvard, blue means Yale. A hood means you’re a PhD. A live peacock pinned to your lapel means you graduated with honors. But it seems unlikely that anyone could know for sure what all these hats are supposed to mean — other than that American academia respects the medieval tradition from which it sprang. One gentleman in an oversize velvet beret might be a 14th-century Venetian doge — if he didn’t have a cell phone clamped to his ear. Another elderly man is wearing a powder-blue fez with fringe all the way around. It looks like an old lampshade.
Suddenly, the gowned geezers are joined by a trio of serious-faced young men who begin conferring in furtive — and unmistakably foreign — tones. It doesn’t matter that they look Croatian. Nor that they are but three of the thousands of foreign nationals who are in the vicinity today (hell, I’m a foreigner); they’re making me nervous, so I make my way over to the Tercentenary Theater, the outdoor area where the ceremony will take place, under the pretense that " I don’t want to miss anything. "
As it turns out, the only trouble of the day is a bit of internecine squabbling among the photographers at the front of the audience, who snap and jostle as the procession files onto the stage. A scattering of nonacademic luminaries, Senator John Kerry among them, joins them on stage. And then the man himself, President Summers, makes his way through the center of the audience, to wild applause and an accompanying troupe of bagpipe players.
IT’S HARD not to like Summers. His Bob-like demeanor is offset by an air of schoolboy nerdiness. He looks a little out of place, though — you just can’t rid yourself of the feeling that this robust, relatively young guy would be more suited to the corridors of power than the gilded halls of academia. This impression is all the more pronounced in comparison to former president Neil Rudenstine, who sits on Summers’s left wearing an expression of infinite melancholy.
The first significant speech of the ceremony is delivered by the president of the Undergraduate Council — a chubby, bespectacled young man whose delivery — arms outstretched before him, torso tilted back — calls to mind stand-up comedy without the punch lines. ( " Take my undergraduate degree ... please. " ) He’s followed by the president of the Harvard Alumni Association, and then the president of Yale University, who heaps a truckload of praise upon the august institution of Harvard.
Zzzzzzzz.
In fairness, the songs — " Cantata Academica, " " O Combien et plaisant, " " Fair Harvard " — are pleasant enough. The " America the Beautiful " bit brings tears to my eyes. And Summers, to his credit, helps mitigate the stuffiness of the affair by accepting the symbols of his office with a playful shrug and a roll of the eyes. He doesn’t shatter the President’s Chair when he sits in it — oh well — but his speech is mercifully short and moderately interesting, laying out initiatives that will carry real weight (he reveals plans to expand Harvard’s campus further into Allston, and pledges more resources for the college’s undergraduate programs).
Still, as I sit there in the bright October sun, I cannot help thinking of some of the more lavish installations gone by: the one for Jared Sparks in 1849, for example, was marred by a riot among what one newspaper described as a " heated and panting congregation. " Or take the one in 1909, for Abbott Lawrence Lowell, which climaxed with a fireworks display. But then, fireworks and public disturbances are the last things we need today. God knows, the boom-boom of the orchestra’s drums is stirring enough, given the circumstances.
BY FOUR o’clock, the ceremony is over, the bells have chimed, and the crowds — the photographers, print journalists, TV crews, academics, alumni, students — file out of the Yard. A few Harvard employees begin breaking down the ceremonial infrastructure. The police officers still stand sentry at the barriers, but they, too, will soon be gone. Life in Harvard Square is returning to normal. Or as close to normal as life gets right now. Rare and extraordinary events are 10-a-penny these days. Pomp and circumstance seems ho-hum. As I make my way home, a single thought occurs to me: glad I didn’t drink the coffee.
Chris Wright can be reached at cwright[a]phx.com
