Some Highlights from Larry Summers's Resignation Letter

Some highlights from Larry Summers's resignation letter:

Letter to the Harvard Community: 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. I believe, therefore, that it is best for the University to have new leadership....

[T]he quality of the experience we provide our students is not fully commensurate with their quality or the quality of the Harvard faculty... student-faculty contact... international opportunities... a start on bringing space for student activities and social life up to the standard of peer institutions....

At a time when the median age of our tenured professoriate is approaching 60, the renewal of the faculty has to be a central concern.... [I]t [is] essential that the University do much better than it has done traditionally to ensure that we are doing everything we can to attract, develop, and retain the most promising emerging scholars...

[E]xtend to all parts of the University the promise that talent, and not ability to pay, is the key to a Harvard education.... We are extending the same philosophy to our graduate and professional schools by making sure that students who choose academic or public service careers are well supported while at Harvard so that they are not unduly burdened if they choose careers whose chief rewards do not come in financial terms... much more... can and should be done to sustain a University-level commitment to financial aid....

[T]he University is in the midst of unprecedented commitments to science and technology. The success of these investments will be crucial over the next several decades to the University's global standing.... We cannot maintain pre-eminence in intellectual fields if we remain constrained by artificial boundaries of departments and Schools. "Each Tub On Its Own Bottom" is a vivid, but limiting, metaphor.... We will not escape its limits unless our Schools and Faculties increase their willingness to transcend parochial interests...

Sixty as the median age of tenured non-emeritus faculty?