On Feb. 15, Skocpol accused Summers of “wrapping [himself] in the mantle of academic freedom” in refusing to release the transcript of his January remarks on women in science. At the meeting, she also said that the University was suffering from a “crisis of governance and leadership.”

And on March 15, Skocpol submitted a docket motion calling for the Faculty to censure Summers for his remarks on women in science and for certain “aspects of the President’s managerial approach.”

Minutes after voting no confidence in Summers, the Faculty passed Skocpol’s motion with 253 for, 137 against, and 18 abstaining.

Skocpol said that although she has been a critic of Summers, she has a good personal relationship with him.

“Personally, my relationship with Larry Summers has always been mutually respectful and a relationship in which there is vigorous discussion and back-and-forth,” she said. “I don’t anticipate any difficulties in working with him.”

A quarter-century earlier, in 1981, Skocpol filed a grievance against the University for gender discrimination when her tenure application was denied. Then-Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky and then-University President Derek C. Bok agreed to review her case, and, after she’d spent four years at the University of Chicago, Harvard offered Skocpol tenure. She accepted the offer and has been at the University ever since.

In 1986, Skocpol described her tenure conflict as “a many-year game of chicken with the leaders of the most arrogant university in the western world.”

Government Department Chair Nancy L. Rosenblum, who has spoken publicly in support of Summers at Faculty meetings, said last month that Kirby “invited an expression of interest” by her in the GSAS deanship. She said she was “undoubtedly” one of several people asked by Kirby if they would be interested in the job. She said she told Kirby she was not interested in the post because she is a relatively new senior faculty member at Harvard—she joined Harvard in 2001—and is also only in her first year as chair of the government department.

Skocpol said that even though she now becomes a top administrator, she will not necessarily become a less vocal faculty member.

“Obviously I’m a dean and I need to address issues with caution from that perspective,” she said. But she added that she is “at least considering the possibility that occasionally [she] will speak in Faculty meetings” as a member of the Faculty.

“That will be a daring departure from past precedent,” she said, “but I am considering it.”

—Staff writer William C. Marra can be reached at wmarra@fas.harvard.edu.