EXODUS TO WASHINGTON

WHEN KENNEDY SCHOOL LECTURER ROBERT B. REICH BECAME THE FIRST HARVARD PROFESSOR TO LEAVE FOR THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION. MORE NAMES WERE EXPECTED TO FOLLOW. HOWEVER, IT SEEMS HARVARD EMPLOYEES ARE RIDING A TIDAL WAVE OF APPOINTMENTS TO WASHINGTON--A SIGHT UNSEEN SINCE PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY '40--LEAVING A VACUUM INSIDE THE IVORY TOWER. THIS WEEK, ONE OF HARVARD'S FIVE VICE PRESIDENTS, JOHN H. SHATTUCK, WAS NOMINATED TO A POST IN THE STATE DEPARTMENT, BRINGING THE UNOFFICIAL UNIVERSITY TALLY TO 11, AND RUMORS ARE CIRCULATING ABOUT YET MORE APPOINTMENTS.

This week's announcement that one of Harvard's top administrators is leaving for the Clinton administration didn't catch many people by surprise.

But the news of Vice President for Government, Community and Public Affairs John H. Shattuck's nomination as assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor seemed to add a new level of urgency to an already serious problem: a massive exodus to Washington that has already drawn nine faculty members from across the University.

Democratic presidents have often relied on Harvard as a key source of experts and advisers. Not since the administration of President John F. Kennedy '40, however, has the Cambridge-Washington axis been so clearly defined.

Then, the busy corridor between Harvard Yard and the White House was a source of pride for the University.

"It felt like we were at the center of the world," said Marshall Ganz '64-'92, who returned to study at Harvard last year after more than a quarter-century hiatus.

That feeling is no less true today. Just ask President Neil L. Rudenstine.

"There's no question about it, we're very pleased that these people can go help out," Rudenstine said in an interview with The Crimson this week. "I congratulate all of them."

Still, the depletion of many of Harvard's best and brightest for the government has Rudenstine noticeably concerned.

"It is really a very substantial loss of excellent people," he said. "There'll be some real holes for a while. These are not people that you can just cover for in a very easy way all the time."

Several Kennedy School of Government professors have left for Washington, including the school's only tenured woman. The Economics Department has already lost three professors to Clinton and will likely lose more soon, and economics professors are worried.

Now, the departure of Shattuck highlights Harvard's dilemma, Rudenstine said. "Particularly in this case, because it's clearly going to be an intensive period in Washington, it's going to be hard to be able to manage as well without a vice president," he said.

"We have excellent people who will be able to serve and help us ... so it's not as if we lack for real quality backup. But if you lose your lead person, you've really got to work pretty hard to make up," Rudenstine said.

Shattuck, Harvard's chief representative to government and media, would have been a vocal advocate of the University's position on several key legislative packages dealing with research funding and financial aid that are making their way through Congress.

"It is a very great loss. He's just done an outstanding job," Rudenstine said. "He's been invaluable not just to Harvard but to higher education in many ways, and particularly last year with the Higher Education Reauthorization Act. His work on student aid was just exceptional."

An able lobbiest, Shattuck nevertheless seems to feel most satisfied dealing with the issue that will soon consume most of his time: human rights. In fact, it is that issue that was the focus of his life before he came to Harvard in 1984, and that has occupied him even during his tenure here.

The 49-year-old former executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington D.C. office, Shattuck has served as an active volunteer leader of Amnesty International in the United States. He has also served on the boards of the National Security Archive, the Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, the Petra Foundation, the Fund for Peace and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

While Shattuck has not ruled out a return to Harvard at some point in the future, he has said that it would not be in his current capacity. That role will be filled temporarily by Jane H. Corlette, director of governmental relations for health policy, while a national search is conducted for a replacement. Sources have said that Corlette is not interested in holding the job permanently.

Accompanying Shattuck to Washington will be his wife, Ellen Hume '68, senior fellow at the Kennedy School's Joan Shorenstein Barone Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy.

Shattuck's departure is not the end of the Cambridge-Washington line. Indications are that more University employees will move to Washington soon, even as the Kennedy School, Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) and Law School have already taken a beating from Clinton appointments and nominations.

The Kennedy School

Nowhere has the impact been stronger than at the Kennedy School.

According to Kennedy School spokesperson Steven R. Singer, half a dozen faculty members, including the school's only tenured woman, have been nominated or are now under consideration for administration posts.

"I think that it's good news for the country," said Guggenheim Professor of Criminal Justice Policy and Management Mark H. Moore. "We're proud of the fact that they've been selected and are going."

The only Senate confirmation thus far has been of former Lecturer on Public Policy Robert B. Reich as secretary of labor. But others are soon to follow, and Kennedy School faculty are concerned about the departures.

Moore said there will be problems for the school in the short run. "We've taken some pretty big hits in foreign policy ... and human resources," he says.

Warren Professor of History Ernest R. May also said the school would temporarily feel the impact of the departures. "In the short run it will make it very difficult," he said. "They will be sorely missed."

Among those to be missed are Wiener Professor of Social Policy Mary Jo Bane and Academic Dean David T. Ellwood '76.

Bane has been nominated for assistant secretary for children and families in the Department of Health and Human Services, while Ellwood, who has worked closely with Bane in the past, is expected to join her as assistant secretary for planning and evaluation.

Assistant Professor of Public Policy John D. Donahue will leave to serve as Reich's advisor, a position Singer said did not require Senate confirmation.

Dillon Professor of Government Graham T. Allison '62 and Ford Foundation Professor of Science and International Affairs Ashton B. Carter have also been rumored to be up for State Department posts.

The growing Kennedy School vacuum, though, is slowly being filled by the arrival of several former Bush administration officials.

Former Secretary of Labor Lyn Martin, former National Security Council members Phillip Zeliko and Robert Blackwill, former Rep. Mickey Edwards (R-Okla.), and former Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Office of Policy Development Roger B. Porter will join the Kennedy School faculty, said Singer.

Porter was IBM Professor of Business and Government at the Kennedy School prior to his Bush Administration appointment, and his return to that post is indicative of the revolving-door phenomenon associated with Harvard and the federal government.

Singer said that those leaving are likely to return. "They're excited about joining the government and will value the experience," he said. "But they're academics at heart."

Both Reich and Nye have served in previous Democratic administrations, the former as director of policy planning for the FTC under president Jimmy Carter and assistant to the solicitor general under president Gerald Ford; the latter, as undersecretary of state for security assistance, science, and technology in the Carter administration.

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences

The Clinton appointments are also thinning the ranks of FAS, and more professors are on the way, said J. Bradford De Long, Danziger associate professor of economics.

De Long said chances are "pretty high" he'll be tapped for a policy analysis and forecasting post in the Treasury department, joining several Harvard economists already in the Clinton camp.

"The exodus is likely to grow," he said of the FAS appointments. "The first wave is gone, but there's a second, bigger wave, and there will be a third wave at the end of the year and a fourth wave next year."

He said the University will see big gaps in its economics and other departments.

"You're going to lose a lot of people from the social sciences," he said. De Long sees a sort of "snowball effect" happening, as Harvard experts already in Washington import their colleagues and students.

Professor of Economics N. Gregory Mankiw has also noted the snowball effect: three economics professors currently nominated for posts: Ropes Professor of Political Economy Laurence H. Summers, Professor of Economics Lawrence F. Katz and Instructor in Economics David M. Cutler have often worked together in the past.

"Each of these people got involved through each other," he said. "All three have coauthored papers together... They have a lot of interests in common."

Summers has been nominated as undersecretary of treasury, Cutler has been tapped as liaison between the Council of Economic Advisors and the National Economics Council, which in turn is chaired by Robert E. Rubin '60, a former co-chair of Goldman Sachs Co. who still serves on Harvard Management Company's board of directors. Katz has been called as chief economist in the Labor department.

De Long, who said he has worked with Summers, is a possible candidate for a Treasury post, and Assistant Professor of Economics John V. Leahy is also a rumored candidate for a Washington post.

In fact, the style of the three fits in well with the somewhat technocratic, efficient and educated image the Clinton camp has projected in the past, Mankiw said, although he did not accept the characterization "policy wonk."

"They're all kind of mainstream, with a common sense view of the world," he said. "They're all terrific economists ... practical, empirically oriented."

Though Mankiw says the three economists cannot be characterized as "liberals," Government Department Chair Susan J. Pharr says it is possible to discern a certain party leaning in the patterns of departure.

"I suppose the Republicans may draw more heavily from the Law School and Business School and Democratic administrations from the Kennedy School and FAS," she said..

So far, five FAS professors have been named or rumored for posts. Dillon Professor of International Affairs Joseph S. Nye will serve as chair of the National Intelligence Council of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Pharr said she expects no more losses from the Government Department after Nye departs, and she promises his return in the spring of 1995.

Economics Department professors are particularly concerned about the losses of their colleagues, said Professor of Economics Robert J. Barrow.

"I think it's terrible," he said.

But department Chair Benjamin M. Friedman, Maier professor of political economy, said economics offerings will not suffer from the loss of professors.

"There will be no interruption in the teaching program," he said. He said he does not know when the nominated professors will leave or how long they will stay away from Harvard. The University has a strict two-year limit on leaves of absence.

Law School

The Law School has already seen one tenured professor move on to the Clinton administration--with less-than-lukewarm indications of returning--and may lose another renowned scholar in Tyler Professor of Constitutional Law Laurence H. Tribe '62.

Professor of Law Christopher E. Edley Jr. said this week has taken a leave of absence to serve as associate director of the Office of Management and Budget, and said Wednesday he may not return to Harvard when his two-year term expires.

Edley, a scholar of administrative law and one of the three tenured Black professors at the Law School, has been dissatisfied with the progress made towards diversifying the faculty.

Edley, who has taught at Harvard since 1981, has also served as director of the Law School's public interest programs.

A White House aide in the Carter administration, Edley said in an interview with The Crimson earlier this week that he had always planned on going back to Washington "the minute a Democrat was elected."

Tribe confirmed yesterday, through his secretary, that he is a candidate for solicitor general, a top Justice Department post. A pre-eminent constitutional scholar and well-known appellate advocate, Tribe has some experience in Washington. He was considered instrumental in killing President Ronald Reagan's 1987 nomination of Judge Robert Bork, giving several hours of Senate testimony on the nominee.

And Tribe, who as solicitor general would argue on behalf of the government in cases before the Supreme Court, has argued against the government in Supreme Court cases.

Earlier this week, he took himself off a case before the nation's highest court in which he was representing the Cheyenne River Sioux against the state of South Dakota.

Tribe said he withdrew from the case to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, since he would have been representing a private party while being considered for a government post.

However, he said the fact that he decided to take himself off the case didn't mean that he had inside knowledge about the chances of his being selected. He told the Boston Globe earlier this week that he has "no idea what his prospects are," but that he is interested in the position.

Tribe, who graduated from the Law School in 1966, has taught at Harvard since 1968. He has written widely on constitutional law and on abortion.

David P. Bardeen, Stephen E. Frank, Rajath Shourie and Anna D. Wilde wrote this article.