Doctor of Humane Letters
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Dr. Lawrence H. Summers is the director of the National Economic Council and assistant to the president for economic policy, appointed by President Barack H. Obama on November 24, 2008. He also most recently served as president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006, becoming the first Jewish president in Harvard’s history.
He began his career as a domestic policy economist with the Council of Economic Advisors, Executive Office of the President of the United States, from 1982 to 1983, under President Ronald Reagan. Following this year in government service, Dr. Summers began teaching at Harvard, where he was professor of economics for a decade beginning in 1983. During this period, he also served as vice president of development economics for the World Bank.
Dr. Summers returned to Washington, D.C. in 1993, where he served as under secretary for international affairs with the United States Department of Treasury. He was named deputy secretary of the Treasury from 1995 to 1999, until named to the department’s top post under President Bill Clinton.
His research contributions were recognized when he received the John Bates Clark Medal, given every two years to the outstanding American economist under the age of 40, and when he was the first social scientist to receive the National Science Foundation’s Alan T. Waterman Award for outstanding scientific achievement. Dr. Summers is a member of the National Academy of Science and has written extensively on economic analysis and policy, publishing more than 150 articles in professional economic journals. He is the author of Understanding Employment, published in 1990.
Dr. Summers has received many awards, including Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” in 2005. He graduated with a BS from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975 and holds a PhD from Harvard University, awarded in 1982.
Dr. Summers’ parents, Anita and Robert Summers, taught at the University of Pennsylvania, where his mother is an emeritus professor of public policy and management and his father is emeritus professor of economics. He is the nephew of Paul Samuelson and Kenneth Arrow, both Nobel laureates in economics. Dr. Summers and his wife, Elisa New, a professor of English at Harvard, have six children.