Harvard lawprof Bill Stuntz has a very interesting (and very pessimistic) essay in The New Republic (free registration req’d) on the Lawrence Summers resignation and the future of Harvard. An excerpt:
Harvard is the General Motors of American universities: rich, bureaucratic, and confident–a deadly combination. Fifty years from now, Larry Summers’s resignation will be known as the moment when Harvard embraced GM’s fate. From now on, the decline will likely be steep. And not only at Harvard: Among research universities as in the car market of generations past, other American institutions will follow the market leaders, straight to the bottom. The only question is who gets to play the role of Toyota in this metaphor.