History Professor Eyed for Yale Deanship

Trumbell Professor of History Nancy F. Cott is among four candidates under consideration to become dean of Yale College, according to the Yale Daily News (YDN).

Members of the search committee to find a successor for departing Dean of Yale College Richard H. Brodhead presented Yale President Richard C. Levin with a ranked list of four candidates on Monday, according to an unnamed professor in the YDN. The article said Levin is expected to announce his decision within three weeks.

Cott was the third candidate listed in order of preference.

The two candidates ranked ahead of Cott by the committee were Yale Graduate School Dean Peter Salovey and Yale History department Chair Jon Butler. Another candidate, Yale Astronomy department Chair Charles D. Bailyn was ranked below Cott.

Cott spent 27 years teaching at Yale before joining Harvard’s faculty in 2002.

Currently on leave and unavailable for comment, Cott is serving as chair of the French-American Foundation in American civilization at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

Cott’s presence on Yale’s short list took many of her colleagues by surprise. Levin has said in the past that he hoped to appoint a Yale professor to the post.

“I’m terribly shocked by this,” said Akira Iriye, chair of Harvard’s history department.

“I hope it’s not going to materialize and she will come back to us and stay as long as she can,” he continued.

Iriye said that Cott has already made a significant contribution to the history department in her short time here.

“She’s a major pioneering scholar of American women’s history,” he said. “She’s already begun to attract a number of graduate students who want to study with her.”

In addition to her important work in the history department, Cott is the Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Radcliffe Institute’s Schlesinger Library, which houses an extensive collection of historical documents and artifacts related to women’s studies.

Speaking through Radcliffe spokesperson Whitney Espich yesterday, Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Drew Gilpin Faust said, “I’m surprised and hope it isn’t true. We would hate to lose her.”

In 1979, Cott helped found Yale’s Women’s and Gender Studies Program and served as its first chair.

Cynthia E. Russett, a Yale history professor and longtime colleague of Cott’s, said Cott remained well-respected among the faculty there.

“She’s always been a very fine admnistrator. She’s really the reason why we have a flourishing women’s studies program,” Russet said.

“It took a lot of doing to get it off the ground,” she added. “She’s one of the most efficient people I’ve ever seen in operation.”

Russett said Cott’s decision to leave Harvard for Yale was heavily influenced by the fact she hails from the Cambridge area.

“The word was that she loved Yale and that she felt well-treated and respected here. The only thing that would lure her away would be going home, back to Cambridge,” she said. “When that opportunity opened up, I don’t think it was easy for her, but she took it.”

Russett said she thought Yale would have a hard time luring Cott back to New Haven.

“In a certain sense I think it would be hard for her to come back. If she’s happy where she is, it’s going to take a very strong offer to tempt her,” she said.

Russett added that she was confident in Cott’s qualifications.

“I do think she’d do a very good job... If Yale is willing to court her, she is certainly qualified. Whether she is interested, I don’t know,” she said.

—Staff writer Nathaniel A. Smith can be reached at nsmith@fas.harvard.edu.