Ronnie's Harvard Men

When the NBC map turned Reagan Blue on election night last November, it set off the quadrennial scurrying about for new employment in the incoming administration. At Harvard, the major difference from 1976 was that this time the Republican-leaning academics were the ones suddenly looking at new career opportunities. "Jobs, jobs, jobs and more jobs," President Reagan promised at a Labor Day speech last week. That was also a prime topic of discussion during the transition period--both in Washington and, in certain circles, Cambridge. When the dust settled, the Harvard line-up in the Reagan administration included:

Richard G. Darman '64. A lecturer in Public Policy and Management, he followed old colleague and Reagan chief-of-staff James A. Baker III in to the White House. Darman is now a deputy assistant to the president, with responsibility for overseeing the flow of information to and from Reagan. He participates in both policy and administrative decisions, and sees Reagan up to several housrs a dag. He previously worked in the Nixon and Ford administrations, and for a Washington-based consulting firm.

Richard E. Pipes, Baird Professor of History. A specialist in pre-revolutionary Russia, Pipes now is the National Security Council's chief Soviet expert. Hawkish on defense issues, Pipes is a bitter enemy of the Soviets, whom he considers dangerous expansionists and implacable foes of the United States. Pipes got himself into hot water last March when he told an interviewer that detente was dead and that a war between the superpowers was inevitable if the Soviet Union didn't peacefully change its system. The White House and State Department quickly slapped his wrists, and there hasn't been a (public) peep from Pipes since. Pipes first burst into public view in 1976 when he headed Team B--a conservative team of defense specialists who concluded that the Soviet Union was in the midst of a military build-up undetected by American intelligence estimates.

Roger B. Porter, assistant professor of Public Policy. A special economics assistant in the Ford Administration, Porter now has a potpourri of economic advisory titles--in the White House, the Treasury Department, and the Office of Management and Budget. Porter was one of the people coordinating Reagan's "100 Days" program to launch the new administration's economic package.

Christopher C. DeMuth '68, lecturer in Public Policy. DeMuth, a former president of the Ripon Society, waited in vain all spring to find out if he would be nominated to head the Environmental Protection Agency. He wasn't, although he had been a leading contender for hte post. But his critical outlook toward regulations ultimately earned him a position in the Office of Management and Budget, the mileu of chief budget-slasher--and an old DeMuth associate--David Stockman.