Bush Taps Former KSG Prof As Envoy

Former Kennedy School of Government (KSG) assistant professor Jendayi E. Frazer has been nominated for an appointment as the U.S. Ambassador to South Africa.

Frazer had been teaching public policy at KSG on and off since 1995 before she left her position late last year.

Since 2001, she has been working as the senior director for African affairs at the National Security Council and a special assistant to President Bush.

According to her former KSG colleagues, the March 16 nomination came as no surprise. Dillon Professor of Government Graham T. Allison Jr. said members of the Bush administration have had their eye on Frazer since her graduate school days. He said National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice recommended Frazer for the associate professorship at KSG.

“When the Bush administration entered, [Frazer] had already known Condi Rice when [Frazer] was a graduate student,” he said. “I remember when we were recruiting her, Condi called me and said, ‘This is a star.’”

Allison pointed out that Frazer currently occupies a high-level position within the White House and all affairs having to do with African foreign policy go through her.

“My impression is that she’s done an excellent job there, and I’m sure [the nomination] is on that basis, because she’s been seen by everyone in the U.S. government dealing with Africa,” said Allison, who served as assistant secretary of defense for policy and plans under the first term of the Clinton administration.

If Bush’s nomination is approved by the Senate, Frazer will be placed at the helm of a delicate diplomatic operation, which in recent years has seen the United States open markets and free trade relations with Africa, and provide AIDS relief to its struggling nations.

South Africa has been battling massive unemployment, crime and poverty in the 10 years since the historic 1994 elections, which ended apartheid and transferred power to Nelson Mandela’s African Nationalist Congress.

As Mandela pushed an economic agenda of privatization and free market reform, the effects of apartheid have persisted. According to a recent government report, the five years between 1996 and 2001 have seen the average income for South African blacks decrease by 17 percent as the average income for whites increased by just as much.

In 2003, Frazer accompanied the President to South Africa as part of a tour of the continent. They visited Senegal, Nigeria, Botswana and Uganda—countries Frazer said exemplify a “new compact of development, which focuses on ruling justly, investing in people and promoting economic freedom,” according to a column on the White House website published before the trip.

As a KSG associate professor, Frazer conducted research on the public policy aspects of intrastate conflict, civil wars and coups.

In 1998, Frazer successfully competed for a fellowship at the Council on Foreign Relations, and took a year-long leave of absence to work with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Department of Defense. She briefly returned to Harvard in 2000 before taking another leave of absence when she landed her positions in the White House and the National Security Council.

“She was a valuable member of the faculty who left to go to work at the Bush Administration,” said Belfer Professor of International Affairs Stephen Walt. “We’re very proud of her and we wish her well.” But before she can move to her new home in Johannesburg, Frazer will have to weather a political storm in the Senate, which may cost her the appointment.

Currently listed as “pending” in the records of the U.S. Senate, the nomination will soon fall into the hands of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where 10 Republicans and nine Democrats will eventually decide whether to put Frazer’s appointment to a general vote in the Senate.

Sources said that Frazer will have no trouble getting past the committee, but a potential filibuster by the Democrats at the senatorial level could hold her back.

Tensions have been palpable on Capitol Hill since Bush’s two recent recess appointments of circuit-court judges. Democrats were further outraged when the president refused to appoint more than a dozen Democrats to government boards and commissions, inspiring Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., to threaten the administration with an unequivocal stall of all judicial nominations. “There has to be a reciprocal treatment of nominees,” Daschle said in a March statement. “It will be very, very difficult for us to move forward on nominations in the future if the matter isn’t resolved.”

Sarah Feinberg, a spokesperson for Daschle, said it is unclear whether Frazer will be affected by the standoff, since an ambassadorship is hardly the same thing as a judicial seat. “If she gets to the committee quickly and comes in front of the Senate right away, she may get caught in that conflict,” she said.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is holding a hearing for three African ambassador nominations today, but Frazer was not on that list as of yesterday afternoon. “Once you’re in the political season, everything takes on a slightly different flavor,” Allison said, “but as far as a human being and an academic colleague, she’s excellent.”

—Staff writer Leon Neyfakh can be reached at neyfakh@fas.harvard.edu..