Fineberg To Head West on Sabbatical

While President-elect Lawrence H. Summers braves the New England weather and the harassing minutiae of his first year as Harvard’s leader, departing Provost Harvey V. Fineberg ’67 will be far away in “perpetual springtime” climates in Mexico and California.

Fineberg, who steps down as the University’s second-highest official on July 1, will split his year-long sabbatical between the National Institute for Public Health (INSP) in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto, Calif.

Fineberg and his wife, Mary E. Wilson, who is the head of Infectious Disease at Mt. Auburn Hospital, will be fellows at INSP. Wilson will be working on a revision of her book, A World Guide to Infections, and Fineberg will focus on projects in his academic specialty—public health.

Julio Frank, INSP’s director, is a close friend of Fineberg and Wilson’s, and will speak at the School of Public Health’s Commencement on Thursday.

Cuernavaca, Fineberg said glowingly, is an “ideal” climate, adding that the research opportunities the institute provided were intriguing.

Fineberg will also be one of 48 fellows at the Center for Advanced Study, which funds research across an array of academic disciplines.

“We give people the opportunity and the atmosphere to do research unencumbered by administrative concerns,” said Douglas McAdam, the center’s director.

The center is situated on Stanford University property, but is independent of that institution, with its own finances, trustees and facilities. It rents the land from Stanford for $1 a year.

The selection process for the fellowships is, McAdam said, “very elaborate.” Thousands of fellows are nominated for only a handful of spots, and are then selected by a panel of experts. Fellows can elect to wait up to six years to serve fellowships. Fineberg was offered a fellowship well before he announced his resignation as provost.

Like Fineberg, President Derek C. Bok spent a year at the center after he stepped down from his administrative position at Harvard. Associate Provost Dennis F. Thompson spent the 2000-2001 school year at the center, as did Harvard presidential prospect Amy C. Gutmann ’71. Fineberg will be joined by several other Harvard professors next year.

Though Fineberg is not required to detail his plans for the semester, he said he will focus on higher education and public health. The center encourages collaboration between its fellows, who eat in a communal cafeteria and play volleyball together.

Fineberg said his plans for the future are still wide open. He said he has set no deadline to decide what he wants to do.

“I’d love to be back at Harvard teaching and doing my academic work...if something worked out,” he said.

He was coy when asked about the prospect of a accepting a university presidency somewhere else.

“I’m open to a lot of things. I feel I have a comparative advantage in higher education,” Fineberg said. But then he also said he’d feel comfortable at a “foundation, a non-profit or in the private sector.”

Fineberg will take it easy during the next few months—his first summer empty of capital campaigns and interfaculty initiatives—as he hikes with Wilson through the Grand Teton Mountains.

—Catherine E. Shoichet contributed to the reporting of this article.

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