More Summers

This is not the first time he's taken on the faculty:

But underneath lay a more substantial concern: If the university president could make Cornel West -- the brightest mass of glowing gas in Harvard's large and glittering constellation of star professors -- quit the recording studio and return to the library, then what could he do to the lowly professors, assistant professors and lecturers whose lights remained invisible to anyone without a telescope trained on obscure academic journals?

Summers called West's bluff, and the celebrity professor chose to leave rather than work for a boss who demanded results. But in that victory were sown the seeds of Summers' future troubles.