In a speech at Morning Prayers at Memorial Church, President Summers asserts that anti-Semitism lurks locally. He denounces the campaign advocating the University’s divestment from Israel, saying that such actions are “anti-Semitic in their effect if not in their intent.”

In the wake of a 30-acre purchase of land known as the Arsenal, Harvard agrees to pay Watertown $3.8 million annually for the next 52 years.

Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby announces plans to department chairs and Faculty Council members this month for students to preregister for classes a semester in advance.

For a second year in a row, Harvard’s endowment loses value, falling $800 million during Fiscal Year 2002. The endowment reportedly stands at $17.5 billion.

OCTOBER

Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby officially kicks off the first curricular review in 25 years in a letter to the Faculty.

The University announces that kegs will be prohibited at all sporting events, citing concerns about alcohol abuse at the 2000 Harvard-Yale game. This ban is an extension of a restriction on kegs at the Harvard-Yale football game instated in 2000.

Because of an error with a new payroll system, known as PeopleSoft, dozens of student workers do not receive checks for their first several weeks of work. They are eventually paid later in the semester.

Republican W. Mitt Romney, a graduate of Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School (HBS), defeats Democratic opponent Shannon P. O’Brien to win the Massachusetts gubernatorial election.

The English department cancels a poetry reading by poet Tom Paulin after over a 100 students and faculty members expressed concerns over Paulin’s anti-Israeli views, but he is reinvited one week later. Chair of the Department of English Lawrence Buell said at the time that there was “widespread concern and regret for the fact that the decision not to hold the event could easily be seen . . . as an unjustified breach of the principle of free speech within the academy.”

The Cambridge School Committee decides not to renew Superintendent of Schools Bobbie J. D’Alessandro’s contract after five years of service, saying that she had failed to present a clear vision for narrowing achievement gaps and formulating an acceptable school merger plan.

Dean of Harvard Law School Robert C. Clark announces that he will step aside at the end of the academic year after over 13 years at the helm. Clark was lauded for his ability to bring stability to an ideologically divided faculty, as well as his fundraising acumen.

DECEMBER

Ending months of speculation that he might leave Harvard, Chair of Afro-American Studies Department Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr., announces that he will remain at Harvard. It was thought that he might leave after two fellow members of his department, former Carswell Professor of Philosophy K. Anthony Appiah and former Fletcher University Professor Cornel R. West ’74, departed for Princeton.

Winthrop House resident Marian H. Smith ’04 dies in an apparent suicide.