CEA Chief Was Denied Tenure

President-elect Barack Obama filled the last of the four top economic positions Monday, announcing that his Council of Economic Advisers will be chaired by University of California at Berkeley economist Christina D. Romer, who was a subject of national indignation earlier this year when Harvard did not offer her a tenured professorship.

Economists, including Harvard professor N. Gregory Mankiw, a former CEA chief under President Bush, have hailed Obama’s pick as an “excellent choice.”

Though the role of the CEA has been diminished since former President Clinton created the National Economic Council in 1993, Romer will be charged with leading a staff of professional economists that provides expert advice to Obama. In addition to Mankiw, past CEA chairs include Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke ’75 and economics professor Martin S. Feldstein ’61.

Harvard Kennedy School professor Jeffrey A. Frankel said that Romer, a highly-regarded scholar of monetary and tax policy, will bring more skills to the job than just her intellectual firepower.

“Not all academics make good policy makers,” Frankel said. “But she’s got—besides her academic intelligence—all the other things you need.”

Romer and her husband David H. Romer, both currently economics professors at Berkeley, were expected to move to Harvard last May.

While Romer’s husband received a tenure offer from Harvard, the University did not extend a similar offer to the newly-appointed CEA chair—a decision which sparked much debate among economists in academic circles nationwide.

“She’s had a very impressive career,” said Mankiw, a close friend of the Romers who was David’s best man at their wedding. “As I told The Crimson in May, I was very eager to have her come, and I was looking forward to having her as a colleague.”

Mankiw’s sentiments were echoed by Frankel—Romer’s former colleague and friend at Berkeley—who added that not hiring Romer was “a big mistake” on Harvard’s part.

Romer will join the ranks of Obama’s recently appointed economic advisors: Federal Bank of New York president Timothy F. Geithner will serve as treasury secretary; former University President and former Treasury secretary Lawrence H. Summers will serve as NEC chief; and Congressional Budget Office director Peter R. Orszag will direct the Office of Manamgent and Budget.

All three have close ties to former Treasury secretary Robert E. Rubin, an executive at Citigroup and a member of the University’s highest governing board, the Harvard Corporation.

University spokesman John D. Longbrake declined to comment on the decision, as tenure cases are confidential.

In selecting candidates for tenured positions at Harvard, department members form a committee to discuss the case and make a recommendation, which is then presented to University President Drew G. Faust and University Provost Steven E. Hyman.

The president and provost then appoint an ad-hoc committee of top academics in the field to review the case and advise the president on the final decision. The committee further solicits letters from well-established scholars in the field regarding the tenure candidate.

Frankel said that something in the ad hoc committee’s deliberations likely tripped up Romer.

“Knowing the way the system works, the idea that President Faust would have just said ‘no’ based solely on the things that are on the record, which are very positive, is inconceivable,” Frankel said. “It has to be that either some members of the ad-hoc committee or some letters—all of which are always totally confidential—were for some reason less positive.”

—Staff writer June Q. Wu can be reached at junewu@fas.harvard.edu.