In 2005 supported by students, donors, alumni, law school

Re the Jan 2005 talk on women in science.

http://www.answers.com/topic/lawrence-summers

The members of the Harvard Corporation, the University's highest governing body, are in charge of the selection of the president and issued statements strongly supporting Summers.

FAS faculty were not unanimous in their comments on Summers. [....]

Summers had stronger support among Harvard College students than among the college faculty. One poll by the Harvard Crimson indicated that students opposed his resignation by a three-to-one margin, with 57% of responding students opposing his resignation and 19% supporting it. ^[5]

[....]

After the Harvard Corporation accepted Summers' resignation, hundreds of millions in pledged contributions were canceled by donors who were disappointed by the Harvard Corporation's failure to stand up to the college faculty [8]. Harvard college alumni, as well as students and faculty at Harvard University's professional schools (in particular Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School), and other large donors generally supported Summers. Summers' dismissal was viewed by many as an indicator that the humanities faculty at the College had power that was disproportionately large relative to their contributions to the University, and that they would seek to use their entrenched position as tenured faculty to block curricular reforms, championed by Summers, that would place greater emphasis on math and science.

================

What's odd, iirc, is that it was the humanities departments that had failed to promote women ( 4 out of 36? ). Perhaps they were trying to blame Summers for their own failings.