Harvard Corporation
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Before Lawrence Summers announced his resignation as president of Harvard on Tuesday, the last upheaval of equal magnitude at the university was 140 years ago. That older drama was perhaps the most consequential episode in the history of American higher education; one that not only created the institution where a Larry Summers could flourish as a graduate student and professor, but oddly also laid the seeds of his presidential breakdown. When Larry Summers, through a series of perceived missteps and affronts, lost the support of the most vocal part of the faculty, the Harvard Corporation could not really have saved him even if it wanted to, because it was no longer clear who was in charge.