Boston, July 29 (Reuters): The only black member of Harvard University’s seven-person governing board said today he had resigned because he could no longer support the school’s controversial president, Lawrence Summers.

Conrad Harper, a lawyer at New York firm Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett and former legal adviser to the US state department under President Bill Clinton, said he tendered his resignation from the Harvard Corporation in a letter dated July 14.

Summers was criticised earlier this year for suggesting that fewer women were in the fields of math and science due to differences in “intrinsic aptitude.” Earlier he triggered an exodus of professors from the African and African American Studies Department after criticising a star professor.

“I found myself unable to continue supporting President Summers and resigning was the only thing to do under the circumstances,” Harper said in a telephone interview.