Thursday, 4:30 PM
Harvard narrows hunt for leader
By Maria Sacchetti and Marcella Bombardieri, GLOBE STAFF
Harvard has whittled hundreds of nominees for its next president to a small list, including internal candidates and presidents of some of the nation’s top universities, a source familiar with the process said.
The source would not give a specific number, but said the university is considering a smaller group than the 30 names the presidential search committee presented to Harvard’s Board of Overseers on Sunday.
Harvard is focusing on an elite group of academics, many of them with deep ties to Harvard.
Eleven of the names were reported Tuesday in the student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson. The source confirmed those names to the Globe on Tuesday, as well as two others.
The presidential search committee will keep narrowing the list of contenders with the intention of picking a president by early next year.
The Board of Overseers then must give final approval.
On the list of 30 candidates presented to the overseers were three Harvard leaders: provost Steven E. Hyman, a neuroscientist; Elena Kagan, the dean of Harvard Law School; and Drew Gilpin Faust, a history professor and dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
The list also included top-tier academic officials in the United States and Britain:University of Pennsylvania president Amy Gutmann; Brown University president Ruth J. Simmons; Princeton University president Shirley M. Tilghman; Tufts University president Lawrence S. Bacow; Stanford provost John W. Etchemendy; Alison F. Richard, the vice chancellor of the University of Cambridge in England; and Lee C. Bollinger, president of Columbia University.
Two former Harvard administrators also were part of the group: Kim B. Clark, the former dean of Harvard’s business school, who surprised many by leaving to become president of Brigham Young University-Idaho in 2005; and Harvey V. Fineberg, a former Harvard provost who is now president of the Washington-based Institute of Medicine. Also on the list is Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former Harvard professor who is the dean of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
Fineberg, Bollinger, and Gutmann were among the top candidates in Harvard’s last search.
