Harvard University President Lawrence Summers, whose five-year tenure has been beset by controversy, announced yesterday that he will step down at the end of the academic year.
Derek Bok, Harvard's president from 1971 to 1991, will serve as interim president from July 1 until a new president is found, according to a statement on the university's Web site.
The president's decision came a week before he was to face a no-confidence vote at a Feb. 28 meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the university's largest school. In past weeks, professors have openly criticized the president's leadership skills in wake of the Jan. 27 resignation of FAS Dean William Kirby, whom many faculty members believe was forced out by Summers.
"I have reluctantly concluded that the rifts between me and segments of the Arts and Sciences faculty make it infeasible for me to advance the agenda of renewal that I see as crucial to Harvard's future," Summers wrote in a letter posted on the university's Web site. "I believe, therefore, that it is best for the university to have new leadership."
The no-confidence vote was to be Summers' second in a year; Summers faced his first last March after he said at an academic conference that women may have less innate scientific ability than men. The motion passed by a 218-185 vote.
A university statement said that Summers will take a yearlong sabbatical before returning to Harvard to teach as a university professor, the highest rank a faculty member can achieve.
Summers, 51, was the U.S. secretary of the treasury during the Clinton administration. Before becoming Har-vard's 27th president, the New Haven, Conn., native was also chief economist of the World Bank and professor of economics at Harvard.
