Summers Selects Provost

PUBLISHED ONLINE SAT. OCT. 27, 2001

Steven E. Hyman, the director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and a former Harvard Medical School professor, will be named the University’s new provost on Monday, pending the approval of the Harvard Corporation.

Reached at home this afternoon, Hyman confirmed that his selection will be officially announced Monday afternoon if his appointment meets with the consent of Harvard’s highest governing board.

University President Lawrence H. Summers has chosen Hyman to fill a vacancy left in Harvard’s top ranks after Harvey V. Fineberg ’67 departed in June.

Since assuming office, Summers has been vocal about science’s importance to the University.

Hyman said that as provost he will encourage “thinking as a community about undergraduate education and how science is taught to all undergraduates, not just science majors.”

Associate Provost Dennis F. Thompson is currently acting provost. Hyman said he hoped to assume his post as soon as six weeks from now.

“I see this as a very, very wonderful opportunity,” Hyman said. “I had a wonderful experience at NIMH applying science to pressing policy matters, but I missed interacting with students.”

Hyman, an associate professor, left Harvard in 1996 when he was tapped to become the head of NIMH.

Since its creation by then-President Neil L. Rudenstine a decade ago, the position of provost has focused on encouraging cooperation between the University’s schools. Hyman said a major challenge for the University and the provost remains thinking about the ways that traditional disciplinary boundaries should be expanded to incorporate new types of knowledge.

Before leaving Harvard six years ago, Hyman was the first director of the Mind, Brain and Behavior interfaculty initiative—a program overseen by the provost’s office. He said that at NIMH, too, he has been responsible for coordinating different approaches to mental health.

Hyman said that interfaculty collaboration was well on its way at Harvard when he left, but that he will continue to focus on its development. He did not specify whether that meant additional initiatives or a new approach.

Hyman first came to Harvard as a medical school student in 1976. In 1989 he became an assistant professor of psychiatry. Four years later he rose to become an associate professor. He was also director of research in the department of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital.

NIMH Deputy Director Richard K. Nakamura, who has worked closely with Hyman, described him as a “terrific” leader.

“He really has a remarkable ability to understand a person’s underlying motivations for their behavior, and that enables him to figure out solutions in creative ways,” he said.

“We’re happy for him, but for the institute we look at it with profound regret,” Nakamura said. “We hope we can keep up the momentum he started.”

Nakamura described the institute’s loss as Harvard’s gain.

“He will want Harvard to be the absolutely best University it can be, and will help the President in pushing an agenda of change,” he said. “He can talk in acronyms, but he can also interpret science and the ideas of academia to the general public.”

Nakamura cited Hyman’s ability to effect change within the often-resistant U.S. government as a particular strength.

“He had the ability to make things happen,” Nakamura said. “I will be forever in his debt for showing me that was possible in the government.”

As the NIMH director, Hyman was responsible for managing the institute’s $1 billion budget and a staff of about 1,500 scientists and other workers, Nakamura said.

In addition, Hyman served a national spokesperson for the institute, explaining NIMH programs to the public and justifying budget expenditures in Congress.

In recent weeks, Hyman stood in the national spotlight, with interviews about post-traumatic stress disorder and bioterrorism in The New York Times and other national media outlets in response to the events of Sept. 11.

He has also served in an advisory role for the Bush administration in recent weeks, as anthrax scares have spread.

University spokesperson Joe Wrinn was unavailable for comment.

—Staff writer David H. Gellis can be reached at gellis@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Catherine E. Shoichet can be reached at shoichet@fas.harvard.edu.