Harvard professors on transition team

By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff

WASHINGTON _ Two Harvard faculty members are joining President-elect Barack Obama's transition team this week, according to his transition office.

John P. White, chair of the Harvard Kennedy School's Middle East Initiative, served as deputy secretary of defense in the Clinton administration and will now be heading Obama's Pentagon Review Team.

The team will be responsible for providing Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden advice on "key policy, budgetary, and personnel decisions" prior to their inauguration on Jan. 20, 2009," according to a statement.

Obama has also tapped Sarah Sewall, another Kennedy School professor who heads the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, to be a member of the transition's Agency Review Working Group. That element is tasked with coordinating and reviewing the work of the various transition teams and she will be responsible for national security issues. A former foreign policy adviser to then-Sen. George Mitchell of Maine, Sewall also served as assistant secretary of defense in the Clinton years.

Both the Pentagon team and review group will be in place by the end of the week, according to Obama's transition office.

White and Sewall join several other Obama confidants with Harvard ties who have been enlisted to help manage the transfer of power from the Bush administration.

Three of Obama's Harvard Law School classmates -- Michael Froman, Julius Genachowski, and Cassandra Butts -- are already serving on the transition team. Froman and Genachowski serve on the transition team's advisory board, while Butts is its general counsel.

Former Harvard Law professor and Obama mentor Christopher Edley, meanwhile, has also been brought on as a transition team adviser.