Five Princetonians make early list for Harvard's top job

Five prominent administrators with close connections to Princeton are possible candidates for the Harvard presidency, according to a list of names produced by the school's presidential search committee.

President Tilghman, Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan '81, former vice provost Ruth Simmons (now president of Brown) and former provost Amy Gutmann (now president of the University of Pennsylvania) are all on the list, which includes the names of 30 potential presidents.

The Boston Globe reported yesterday that Wilson School Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter '80 is also being considered.

The Harvard search committee privately gave the list to the university's Board of Overseers on Sunday, and The Harvard Crimson published a partial list of 11 candidates on Tuesday. An individual with knowledge of the list confirmed the accuracy of the Crimson's list to The Daily Princetonian.

A search to find a new leader for Harvard began after former president Larry Summers resigned in March following half a dozen major controversies, including his statement that differences in "intrinsic aptitude" between the sexes may explain why there are fewer women than men in top science and engineering academic posts. He was replaced by interim president Derek Bok, who served as president of Harvard from 1971 to 1991.

Tilghman, now more than five years into her presidency, has been at Princeton since 1986, when she was hired as a professor of life sciences.

Shortly after Summers' resignation, Tilghman denied any interest in moving to Cambridge to take up the top job there. "Why would I leave the best job in higher education?" Tilghman told the 'Prince' in March, adding, "I have spoken to no one, and I have no interest in the job."

Harvard Law School professor Randall Kennedy '77, who is also a member of Princeton's Board of Trustees, said in an interview last month that "it would not be surprising at all" for Tilghman to be in the running for the Harvard presidency. "It is not unknown that she is an excellent president, and it would be intelligent for Harvard to be considering her."

Kennedy thinks Tilghman is "very happy at Princeton" and "has more to accomplish at Princeton," including the consolidation of the four-year residential college system and the construction of an arts neighborhood.

"That Amy Gutmann and Elena Kagan are being mentioned for the Harvard Presidency is yet another indication of Princeton's remarkable role as an incubator of talent," Kennedy wrote in an email, referring to the University's former provosts and alumna. "A striking number of persons with Princeton connections have been elevated to the highest circles of leadership in higher education over the past quarter century."

Gutmann was a finalist for the Harvard presidency in 2001, meeting with the search committee that ultimately chose Summers, a former treasury secretary in the Clinton administration.

In early October, the Crimson spotted Gutmann — a Radcliffe College alumna with a Harvard doctorate — in Cambridge and speculated that she might be in town for an interview with the Harvard search committee.

Get the best of ‘the Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

Gutmann, however, said she was there fundraising for Penn. Gutmann's daughter and son-in-law are also Harvard graduate students who live in Cambridge.

When asked about her desire to be Harvard's next president, Gutmann denied any interest. "I'm already on record with The Daily Pennsylvanian," she said, referring to an article in that paper. "I love what I'm doing at Penn and plan to be here for the foreseeable future," she said in March.

Slaughter and Kagan, friends since their undergraduate years at Princeton, have taken similar paths since Princeton. Both were Sachs scholars, earning master's degrees from Oxford, and then continued on to Harvard Law School. Slaughter later returned to Oxford to receive her Ph.D. in international relations.

Slaughter, who became the Wilson School dean in 2002, was unavailable for comment.

Kagan, considered one of the frontrunners in the race, has been dean of Harvard Law since 2002 and is praised for bringing new life to the school and beginning a $400 million capital campaign that has raised $250 million in its first three years.

Except for a two-year stint at Spelman College, Simmons worked at Princeton from 1983 to 1995, holding various administrative positions. She became president of Smith College in 1995 and moved to Brown in 2001. She has denied interest in the Harvard presidency.