Lawrence Summers

Lawrence Summers was one of the main architects of U.S. economic policy in the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st. In addition to serving as a key economic adviser to two Democratic presidents, he served as chief economist of the World Bank and president of Harvard University. In just about every role, he has been described as a brilliant mind and a perennial gadfly.

Early life

It’s not unreasonable to say that Lawrence Summers was born to be an economist. His parents, Robert and Anita (Arrow) Summers, were both economics professors at the University of Pennsylvania. Summers had not one but two uncles (one on each side of the family) who were Nobel laureates in economics. As a sixth-grader, Summers embarked on a summer project to determine statistically if there was a positive correlation between teams in first place on the Fourth of July and those making the playoffs.

He entered college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at 16, considered studying math and physics, but quickly changed majors to economics. After getting his bachelor’s degree at MIT in 1975, he went to Harvard University, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1982 for a thesis on capital income taxation. The next year, he became one of the university’s youngest tenured professors. He was 28.

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Even as his professional life was taking off, he suffered a serious setback personally when he was diagnosed that same year with lymphoma. He underwent months of chemotherapy and has remained cancer free. But according to a Vanity Fair profile, the experience influenced his worldview and his approach to public policy:

“The feeling of extreme vulnerability that I had during that experience caused me to be more attentive to the people who are on the vulnerable side of the ledger.”

Public service

Even as Summers was a prolific writer of economics papers at Harvard, he became increasingly interested in applying his ideas to real-world policy. He volunteered for Michael Dukakis’s 1988 presidential campaign alongside fellow Harvard professor Robert Reich, who would later become secretary of labor.

Summers left Harvard in 1991 to become chief economist at the World Bank. After Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, Summers was appointed undersecretary of Treasury. A year later, he received the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded to the most outstanding American economist under age 40. But it was Robert Rubin’s elevation to lead Treasury—and Summers’s subsequent promotion to deputy—that put Summers on the world stage, as he played a central role in responding to financial crises in Brazil, Russia, Mexico, and Asia.

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When Rubin left the role in 1999, Summers succeeded him and served until the end of Clinton’s second term in 2001. On his website, Summers describes his tenure at Treasury as coinciding with the longest period of sustained economic growth in U.S. history, noting that he is the only treasury secretary in the last half-century to have left office with the national budget in surplus.

But even during his highly successful White House tenure, Summers’ reputation for arrogance made him distrusted by Congress. During the second Clinton administration, Summers worked hard try to make his demeanor less caustic.

Tumultuous tenure at Harvard

Shortly after leaving the Clinton White House, Summers returned to Harvard as a professor; he was named the university’s 27th president in March 2001. In writing about Summers’ new role, The New York Times described him as “one of America’s brightest economic minds, a man with deep roots in academia, strong ties to the corporate world, extensive international connections and a colorful record in government.”

Summers quickly became a public face for Harvard and was widely admired by students as he worked to revive the undergraduate curriculum, but the politics of the role—and his tendency for speaking frankly—created difficulties. Early in his tenure, Summers confronted Professor Cornel West about grade inflation in his class, mocked the philosophy professor’s rap album as “an embarrassment to Harvard,” and otherwise questioned his scholarship. West left Harvard shortly after the exchange.

But it was an appearance at an off-the-record discussion that ultimately spelled the end of Summers’ five years at the helm of one of America’s leading institutions. In January 2006, Summers attended an economic luncheon at which he said there may be innate reasons why women are underrepresented in the sciences in academia, including women being less willing to work “80 hours a week” than men.

Summers apologized if he was misunderstood, but said he was trying to “add some provocation to what I understand to be basically a social science discussion.” After a month of turmoil and facing a vote of no confidence, Summer resigned, ending what The New York Times described in a front-page article as “a relatively brief and turbulent tenure.”

Return to the White House

It is a testament to both Summers’ economic genius and the depth of the 2007–08 financial crisis that President Barack Obama named Summers to be director of the National Economic Council in 2009. In this key advisory role, Summers again drew both praise and criticism. Obama appreciated his forthright manner and willingness to speak truth to power, but he continued to rub some in the administration the wrong way. Top economic adviser Christina Rohmer joked about tensions, saying in an interview, “There are only a few times that I felt like smacking Larry.”

Still, Summers’ impact was considered key in weathering the financial crisis. When he left the White House in 2010, Obama remarked, “I will always be grateful that at a time of great peril for our country, a man of Larry’s brilliance, experience and judgment was willing to answer the call and lead our economic team.” And The Economist considered his economic thinking influential enough to coin the “Summers Doctrine,” dubbing it the fusion of “a microeconomic ‘laissez-faire’ mentality with macroeconomic activism.”

By 2013, as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s term was about to end, Summers seemed the leading contender to succeed him. Instead, Obama nominated Janet Yellen for the role, in part because financial disclosures—detailing speaking fees and work with major banks, hedge fund companies, and financial firms—raised potential conflicts of interest that made Summers’ confirmation by the Senate far from guaranteed. When it became clear that the politics weren’t in his favor, Summers withdrew from consideration.

A colleague at Harvard defended Summers, using his reputation for directness to argue that no amount of money could influence Summers’ policy stances. “When it comes to Larry Summers, for good or for bad, he’s uncontrollable when it comes to the positions he takes,” professor Robert Z. Lawrence said.

Summers returned to Harvard, where he still teaches. He has continued to weigh in on public economic policy, including opposing the stimulus plan enacted by President Joe Biden in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and calling President Donald Trump’s tariff policies “a self-inflicted wound.”