‘Because Larry has shown up for us’ 

In introducing the final panel, Gene Sperling, who directed the National Economic Council for Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, remarked, “This is not a roast.”

But the recent economic policy conference marking Lawrence H. Summers’ 70th birthday was often roast-like — although always affectionate — interspersed with anecdotes from computer labs during Summers’ student days, the halls of Washington, D.C., and the president’s office in Mass Hall. Pointed comments about economic concepts prompted laughter, as did Summers — seated in the front row — who offered some good-natured rebuttals to the ribbing.

The gathering featured panels on Summers’ impact on modern finance, labor and public economics, and macroeconomics and policy. Speakers described a colleague and friend who has had a deep impact on those around him. His trademark probing questions have pushed others to think deeper, while his public positions have made a difference on topics as disparate as the recent rise and fall of inflation, passage of the Affordable Care Act, and his early recognition, in 1992, of the importance of educating girls in the developing world.

“No one was talking about this, but Larry did, and he single-handedly took that issue from something that education ministers care about to something finance ministers care about,” said former Meta chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, “And we all know the power difference between those two posts. Literally millions and millions of girls owe a change in their lives and futures to that speech.”

Today, Summers is the Charles W. Eliot University Professor and the Frank and Denie Weil Director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Kennedy School. His career spans studies at MIT and Harvard; the World Bank, where he was chief economist; the U.S. Treasury department, where he was secretary from 1999 to 2001; Harvard’s president’s office from 2001 to 2006; and the National Economic Council, which he directed from 2009 to 2011 under Obama.

Panelists painted a portrait of a scholar and public servant who is an innovative thinker and fearless in his thoughts and beliefs: Summers at one point remarked about a fundamental concept he still disagrees with, to knowing laughter. “I’ve lost that argument with the world, largely. I’m aware of that, but not to the extent of giving it up.”

Jason Furman, former chair of the Council of Economic Advisors and HKS’ Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy, described Summers’ ability to extract knowledge from those around him by focusing on a single issue or question and probing it until he was satisfied he had learned all he could. UC Berkeley Professor Brad DeLong said Summer’s questioning style went both ways: People learned more than facts and figures from him. They learned how to think differently.

“Larry’s nearly unique edge, I think, is an extremely, extremely sharp eye for what pain points are about to become salient, over and over seeing when things are changing in the macro economy so we really need to change our models to deal with skating where the puck is going to be,” said DeLong, who has been a co-author with Summers. “Because the important questions are about now and the next decade. You write even a good paper about an important question in macro from a decade ago, and you have written a paper about an unimportant question.” 

Sandberg, who graduated from Harvard Business School in 1995, said Summers’ impact on her career has been profound. She met him as a student, he advised her thesis, gave her a job at the World Bank when he was chief economist, and later at the Treasury, where she was his chief of staff. Through her career he was always willing to listen, she said, and she knows he listened to others even when they were facing public scrutiny, a time when many would shrink from associating with them.

“He never worried that he would somehow get dragged into someone else’s mess. He just showed up,” Sandberg said. “I know all of us here showed up for this day because Larry has shown up for us.”