A Boon for the Kennedy School

When Bill Clinton became the president of the United States in 1993, a flock of Harvard scholars migrated to Washington to join his administration. Two professors who joined the exodus, Joseph S. Nye Jr. and David T. Ellwood '75, have at long last returned to Harvard as the dean and academic dean of the Kennedy School of Government.

This chapter in the Harvard-Washington saga brings good news for the Kennedy School and Harvard as a whole. Students can again look forward to Nye's illumination of international conflict; he has indicated that he may resume teaching after becoming accustomed to his new job. Perhaps after a similar period of adjustment Ellwood, who wrote landmark papers on poverty with Mary Jo Bane, will again contribute one of his charismatic guest lectures to Ec 10 or offer a course in the economics department.

At the Kennedy School, we hope Nye will devote himself to building a solid base of funds through the ongoing capital campaign. We also hope that Nye and Ellwood can provide direction at the school based on their combined knowledge of domestic and foreign policy as well as their academic and political expertise.

The new appointments also signal some hope that two of the remaining pilgrims to Washington will someday return. Harvard allows professors to take leaves of up to two years for outside positions, as professors Lawrence F. Katz (chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor) and David M. Cutler (chief health economist at the Council of Economic Advisers) did.

But Nye and Ellwood resigned their Harvard professorships when they became assistant secretary for international security affairs at the U.S. Department of Defense and assistant secretary of planning and evaluation at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services respectively, and for this reason their returns are more surprising.

Could we now expect Lawrence H. Summers, who was one of Harvard's leading public finance professors before taking a series of jobs that led to him being appointed deputy secretary of the Treasury, to someday return here to teach? How about Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich? Harvard's international reputation would not suffer from the homecoming of these other notables.

The effects of the Washington exodus of 1992 and 1993 have almost disappeared, but we must wonder how permanent this situation will be. If Clinton is re-elected in 1996, might another drove of professors not cake the trip south? For the time being, at least, Harvard can reap the benefits of Nye and Ellwood's return.