Lawrence Henry "Larry" Summers (born November 30, 1954) is an American
economist. He served as the 71st
United States Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2001 under President
Bill Clinton. He was Director of the White House
United States National Economic Council for President
Barack Obama until November 2010.
[3] Summers is the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at
Harvard University's
Kennedy School of Government. He is the 1993 recipient of the
John Bates Clark Medal for his work in several fields of economics. Summers also served as the 27th
President of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006. Summers resigned as Harvard's president in the wake of a
no-confidence vote by Harvard faculty that resulted in large part from Summers's conflict with
Cornel West, financial
conflict of interest questions regarding his relationship with
Andrei Shleifer, and a 2005 speech in which he suggested that the under-representation of women in science and engineering could be due to a "different availability of
aptitude at the high end," and less to patterns of discrimination and socialization.
Summers has also been criticized for the economic policies he advocated as Treasury Secretary and in later writings.
[4] In 2009, he was tapped by President Obama to be the director of the White House
National Economic Council.
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