Harvard's President: Guess Who?

Is your candidate a respected intellectual? Does your candidate have administrative experience? Can your candidate win the respect of faculty? Is your candidate the next president of Harvard University?

Can you guess who?

Just five years after members of the governing boards celebrated their selection of Lawrence H. Summers as the University’s president, the guessing game is once again being played at Harvard.

The search for Summers’ successor is still in its infancy; its stewards are amassing troves of potential names. And in a months-long search process bound to consume the campus, that long list will be whittled down to the single individual who will ultimately set up shop in Mass. Hall.

The stakes are high. The completion of Summers’ unrealized vision for the University—the pursuit of reforms to the undergraduate experience and curriculum, a formidable expansion across the Charles River into Allston, and the prospect of a record-setting capital campaign—may ironically be left to his successor, who must chart the future direction of the University.

“This is the most important decision that this group of overseers will make in their lifetime,” says Climenko Professor of Law Charles J. Ogletree Jr. “The implications of being unsuccessful a second time would almost be unforgivable.”

The search was officially launched March 30—just over five weeks after Summers’ resignation—with the announcement of the members of the search committee. The committee comprises the six members of the Harvard Corporation—other than the president—and three members of the Board of Overseers.

“We’ve just really begun our activities,” the search committee’s chair, Corporation Senior Fellow James R. Houghton ’58, writes in an e-mail. “I think the year ahead will be a very full one.”

But in an unprecedented move for Harvard, two formal advisory groups—one composed of faculty and the other of students—were also formed to help the search committee reach out to various constituencies across the University.

The ultimate decision still lies with an exclusive group of trustees who are custodians of an unusually secretive selection process. But while the last search drew criticism for not being sufficiently consultative, the search committee’s interactions with students, faculty, and alumni this time around suggest that a more open, inclusive search is underway.

Whether the committee members take the advice or not, they are poised to have great influence over Harvard’s future path.

‘THE BOSTON PHONE BOOK’

Students, faculty, and staff opened their e-mail inboxes in mid-April to find a note from Houghton soliciting their advice on the search. Hard copies of the letter were mailed to about 320,000 alumni.

In response, eager friends of the University have submitted an enormous list of potential candidates—“the size of the Boston phone book,” says the chair of the faculty advisory group, Sidney Verba ’53.

For the first round, everyone goes into the hat.

“As you would imagine, the names vary tremendously, from names you and I would recognize but wouldn’t think were appropriate, to names we’ve never heard of, to names of administrators at major universities, to names of senior scholars,” says Verba, the Pforzheimer University professor and director of the University Library.

The search committee is continuing to collect new names for the list, according to Houghton.

But in the coming months, the committee will narrow the slate with successively shorter and shorter “short lists.” Past searches have begun with a first cut exceeding 400 or 500 names.

Charles P. Slichter ’45, who chaired the search for Summers’ predecessor, Neil L. Rudenstine, said that his committee “looked seriously at every name that was put forward.”

If the committee follows precedent, it will then convene biweekly throughout the fall as it pares down the list to the 30 or 40 most serious candidates.

If the individual selected accepts the position, the search committee will then present its recommendation to the Board of Overseers for approval. The overseers are unlikely to overturn the committee’s choice.

Harvard will then have named its 28th president.

DEMANDING A VOICE

As with many of Harvard’s institutions, the presidential search is rooted in tradition.

The 1650 that charter that founded the College states the president of the University is to be chosen by the Corporation with the counsel and consent of the Board of Overseers.

The highly-secretive search has changed little over the years, save the addition of three overseers to the search committee in 1990.

The process is as unique as it is enduring.

According to Judith Block McLaughlin, a senior lecturer on education at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and an expert on presidential transitions, most universities’ governing boards assemble search committees that bring together faculty, trustees, and sometimes, students.

“I think there’s no question that [at Harvard] it’s not as inclusive as other search processes,” she says.

Over the years, students and faculty have repeatedly called for direct representation on the search committee, but members of the governing boards have resisted.

The circumstances surrounding Summers’ resignation, however, may have persuaded the Corporation to reach out to the campus in a reconciliatory gesture in order to find his replacement.

Though the composition of the search committee has not changed, the new search, giving students and faculty formal involvement in the process through the two advisory groups, may still be Harvard’s most open in recent memory.

“Inevitably, every search is a response to the previous search,” writes Hobbs Professor of Education and Cognition Howard E. Gardner ’65 in an e-mail. “Especially so when—for whatever reason—the previous search led to a failed presidency.”

The faculty group includes 13 professors, representing all of Harvard’s schools and a range of disciplines within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The student committee is comprised of 14 students drawn from across Harvard’s schools.

“We have always interviewed faculty and students, but we have never had a formal committee before this particular search,” Houghton writes. “We thought it would be a good idea to get the views of the faculty and the students as we go along.”

This summer, the students will formulate a plan to gather their peers’ input when they return to campus in the fall, according to the group’s chair, Matthew J. Murray, a joint-degree student at the Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Law School.

Verba says he expects his own group will play a “very active role” in the search process as the search committee narrows its list of potential candidates.

“We in no way think of ourselves as having a different agenda from the search committee, the agenda being to find the best person for what is a very important job right now,” Verba says.

Incoming Interim President Derek C. Bok will not have a formal seat on the search committee because of the daily demands of his job, but he says he will still be “talking to the search committee.”

TABLE TALK

The members of the search committee show no sign of taking the summer off.

At the Harvard Club of New York last month, two members of the committee—Houghton and outgoing Vassar College President Frances D. Fergusson, an overseer—worked a room of alums to gather input for the search.

Houghton and Fergusson discussed the search process and then opened the floor to questions from the 15 to 20 gathered alumni before splitting up into two tables for dinner.

“They showed no bias or leaning one way or the other,” says outgoing Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) President Yuki A. Moore Laurenti ’79, who attended the event. “They just asked people to talk.”

Other members of the search committee have also begun to fan out across the country to consult with small groups of active alumni.

Overseer and Boston lawyer William F. Lee ’72 paid a visit to the executive board of HAA at its spring meeting last month in Cambridge, where he solicited their input on Summers’ vision for the University and the traits the committee should consider in a new president.

“We had a very open and free-flowing discussion,” says Laurenti, who adds that she does not recall this level of alumni outreach during the last search.

Other alumni and donors have also told The Crimson that they have already communicated with members of the committee about the search.

“I’ve been very impressed with the outreach in such a short period of time,” says incoming HAA President Paul J. Finnegan ’75.

THE NAME GAME

The selection of Summers was an unconventional choice, but committee members were won over by the former Treasury secretary’s big ideas for Harvard’s future.

“We agreed that we needed somebody more aggressive, more pushy, bolder,” former University Treasurer D. Ronald Daniel told The New York Times in 2003.

But Summers lacked experience running an academic institution, and some observers have urged the committee to now select a candidate with more proven credentials in university administration.

“The most important thing right now is to find somebody who understands the problems of leadership in a complex university,” says Jay W. Lorsch, the Kirstein professor of human relations at Harvard Business School. “That means you can’t get somebody who thinks they can dictate solutions to every problem.”

There exist a number of potential candidates who have distinguished themselves in university management, but naming names at this stage of the search is a highly speculative sport.

The field, however, is not broad.

“Probably, one could write 5-10 names on a piece of paper today and be virtually certain that one of them will be named Harvard president,” writes Gardner in an e-mail. “The knowledge base and personal qualities desired are sufficiently rare that only a few people qualify.”

Prominent leaders in higher education today include anthropologist Alison F. Richard, head of the University of Cambridge; Stanford Provost John Etchemendy, a professor of philosophy; University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman; Princeton President Shirley M. Tilghman; and Shirley Ann Jackson, a physicist and the president of Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.

Other candidates whose names have been bandied about include Ruth J. Simmons, who, as president of Brown, is the first African-American leader of an Ivy League school. Tufts University President Lawrence S. Bacow has also been mentioned. Bacow, a former MIT chancellor, holds degrees from Harvard Law School and the Kennedy School of Government. University of California President Robert C. Dynes, Cornell Provost Carolyn Martin, and Washington University in St. Louis Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton are also prominent leaders in higher education.

Some candidates from Harvard’s last search are again players in the campus guessing game, including former Provost Harvey V. Fineberg ’67, now president of the Institute of Medicine; Amy Gutmann ’71, now president of the University of Pennsylvania; and the number two candidate, Lee C. Bollinger, who is now president of Columbia.

Both Gutmann and Bollinger have said that they intend to stay put.

Strong candidates abound at Harvard as well, including Radcliffe Institute Dean Drew Gilpin Faust, who presided over the University’s high-profile diversity initiative last year. Elena Kagan has won over students and faculty at Harvard Law School since her appointment in 2002. And Provost Steven E. Hyman has been an influential force in the University’s administration, with oversight of all of Harvard’s academic programs as well as the expansion into Allston.

The most high-profile Harvard insider whose name has been mentioned is Corporation member Nannerl O. Keohane, a former president of Duke University and Wellesley College and a member of the presidential search committee.

Keohane, however, told The Boston Globe in March that she is “not available” for Harvard’s top job.

“I want to tell people to please stop putting me on the lists of potential candidates,” she said then.

But unlike the corporate world, most successful candidates for university presidencies come from the outside. Internal candidates cannot match the “romantic allure” of an outsider, says McLaughlin, the expert on presidential transitions.

A woman or minority could gain the presidency, which would be a first for Harvard. But other factors will also likely play a role in the committee’s decision, such as age and alumni status.

“What would it mean for Harvard to appoint a non-Harvard alum? What would it mean for Harvard to appoint a non-academic? All of these are questions that the board will consider,” McLaughlin says.

In the end, search committee members will make their selection on the basis of individuals, not a checklist of characteristics.

“You’re trying to decide among three people or among four people, each one of whom has got most of what you want, but not everything,” Slichter says.

BOK’S TICKING CLOCK

The search committee is on a deadline.

While Bok has publicly committed to staying in Mass. Hall until a new president is ready to take office, he says he expects that an interim tenure lasting beyond July 1, 2007 would be “really quite exceptional.”

Verba says he is inundated with questions about the timeline of the search but has few answers for now.

“It’s not going to be done by Labor Day, and I’d be really depressed if it’s not done sometime in the spring or the late spring, because we really need a new president by the end of the academic year,” he says.

According to Houghton, the search committee is not operating with any particular timetable.

“We will take the needed amount of time to come up with the right candidate,” he writes.

The pressure on the search committee to select the right individual for the University’s highest office is great.

“People are counting on you to do it right,” Slichter says. “You owe it to this magnificent University and all the people who inhabit it now, and in the future, and in the past, to make this result be something that everyone is proud of and feels, ‘Boy, that was a Harvard job they did in the selection.’ That’s what you want.”

—Staff writer Nicholas M. Ciarelli can be reached at ciarelli@fas.harvard.edu.