Next President Same as Last?

With constant public scrutiny and the always-present threat of a Faculty no-confidence vote, the Harvard presidency might seem a daunting post for any potential candidate. But it’s less frightening if you’ve already been impeached.

Although other names mentioned in connection with Harvard’s top post have publicly disavowed any interest, former President Bill Clinton last night did not immediately rule out a future in Massachusetts Hall.

Clinton spoke very briefly to a Crimson reporter shortly after giving a speech in Boston endorsing Democratic gubernatorial candidate Deval L. Patrick ’78.

Asked whether he would consider serving as Harvard’s next president, Clinton, reaching out to shake the reporter’s hand, said, “I don’t know. Thank you.”

Dozens of audience members were aggressively positioning themselves for a handclasp with the former commander-in-chief in the din-filled ballroom of the Westin Hotel at Copley Place, where Clinton was headlining a fundraiser for Patrick.

Clinton would not be the first to have held the highest office in the country and at an Ivy League university.

Woodrow Wilson served as Princeton’s president from 1902 to 1910 before embarking on a political career that landed him in the Oval Office. And Dwight Eisenhower led Columbia from 1948 to 1953, after his term as supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force but before becoming president.

Clinton was among the more than 400 potential candidates originally considered during Harvard’s last presidential search, from 2000 to 2001, but he did not make the narrowed list of the 30 to 40 top contenders for the job. The search ended with the selection of Clinton’s last treasury secretary, Lawrence H. Summers.

Former Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 called the prospect of another Clinton presidency “improbable.”

“I think actually that a lot of people have suggested him,” Lewis said last night. “My own opinion is that we don’t need another figure from Washington.”

And when the author of “Making Harvard Modern,” historian Morton Keller, was asked whether Clinton stood a chance of succeeding Interim President Derek C. Bok, he said, simply, “No.”

“I think they want an academic person who has experience not with government so much as with university administration,” Keller said of the current presidential current search committee.

In October 2000, Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles correctly predicted that Clinton’s name would not make the “short list” of presidential candidates.

“I don’t believe that Mr. Clinton is very likely to be appointed to the presidency of Harvard,” Knowles said at the time. “Don’t we all look for an intellectual?”

—Staff writer Daniel J. T. Schuker can be reached at dschuker@fas.harvard.edu.