In King, Faculty Found Its Academic

Conrad K. Harper’s resignation from the Harvard Corporation in July left the University’s powerful board with six whites and one woman among them. But as an influential group of professors considered what they hoped to see in Harper’s replacement, their focus was not on race or gender. What they wanted was an academic.

They got exactly that with the selection on Sunday of Patricia A. King, a law professor at Georgetown and an expert in biomedical ethics, who also happens to be black and female. Several professors who have been critical of the Corporation and University President Lawrence H. Summers said in interviews this week that they were pleased with the choice of the academic King.

In September, less than two months after Harper’s surprise departure, a group of 22 current and former department chairs published an open letter in Harvard Magazine to the committee searching for the new Corporation member.

Noting Harper’s “humanistic breadth and culture,” the professors urged the committee to appoint someone in the same mold—“a distinguished educator, of independent mind.”

They made no mention of race, though Harper was the first African-American to serve on the Corporation, nor did they touch on Harper’s role as the only known critic of Summers on the board. Instead, the professors focused squarely on the replacement’s profession, seeking to reduce the influence of Corporate America on the board.

“It is crucial that the new member of the Corporation have deep knowledge of and a close affiliation with the academic world,” the professors wrote.

In discussions among professors, several big names in higher education came up as possible replacements for Harper.

An e-mail from Romance Languages and Literatures Department Chair Christie McDonald dated September 6, which was obtained by The Crimson, lists “potential candidates” for Harper’s position that, she wrote, “have found consensus among several colleagues.”

All seven of the suggested replacements were academics, including five current university and college presidents. Among them were MIT President Susan Hockfield and Brown University President Ruth J. Simmons.

McDonald noted in the e-mail that the list was not meant to be “exhaustive or limiting.” She could not be reached for comment.

The search for a new Corporation member came at a time when the board was trying to be more responsive to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, in the wake of the standoff between Summers and the Faculty last spring. Professors have reported a substantial increase in conversations with Corporation members over the past year.

Indeed, McDonald indicated in her e-mail that she had been in touch with Robert D. Reischauer ’63, a Corporation member, to discuss the search for Harper’s replacement.

In reaching out to professors and acceding to their request for an academic on the Corporation, the board left many faculty critics satisfied.

Most of the professors who signed the open letter in September were hesitant to discuss the King appointment at length this week, saying they were unfamiliar with King and had not had a chance to reflect on the decision. But several of the signatories sounded a positive tone.

“I’m generally quite in [favor of] and enthusiastic about the choice of Patricia King to the Corporation as someone who understands the academic mission and who can represent a strong independent voice on the Corporation,” Andrew A. Biewener, chair of the organismic and evolutionary biology department, wrote in an e-mail.

Richard Thomas, chair of the classics department and also a signatory to the letter, said he thought King “was an excellent choice.”

And perhaps Summers’ most vocal faculty critic, Professor of Anthropology and of African and African American Studies J. Lorand Matory ’82, said last night that the search committee’s choice was “superb” and “fantastic.”

But Matory, who authored the no-confidence resolution that was approved by the Faculty last spring, said King’s appointment does not change his view that of the president.

“I still think he should resign,” Matory said of Summers.

Matory said he does not expect King immediately to push hard for a drastic changes to the Corporation’s course. But, he said, “I hope that she reverses the Corporation’s recent history of very bad decision making.”

—Evan H. Jacobs contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Anton S. Troianovski can be reached at atroian@fas.harvard.edu.