Kagan '81 makes Harvard shortlist

Only one of the five women with close ties to Princeton who had been considered to replace interim chief Derek Bok as the next president of Harvard is still in the running, according to a report by the school's student newspaper.

Early last month, President Tilghman; Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan '81; former vice provost Ruth Simmons, now president of Brown; and former provost Amy Gutmann, currently president of Penn, were listed among the 30 potential candidates for Harvard's top job.

Among these names, a recent Crimson article listed Kagan as one of the remaining presidential candidates. Two anonymous sources for the newspaper said that Simmons, Gutmann and Tilghman were "no longer in serious contention."

The Boston Globe confirmed that Wilson School Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter '80 has also been considered.

According to the Crimson's anonymous sources, the committee responsible for determining the next president is still willing to consider additional candidates.

"I find it amusing that a newspaper that published an article that speculated that I was a candidate after I had made it clear that I was not is now publishing the fact that I am no longer a serious candidate!" Tilghman said in an e-mail. "Are they now claiming credit for this 'scoop'?"

"In any case," she added, "I have been clear from the outset to all who cared to ask that I am deeply devoted to Princeton, and have the best job in higher education. Enough said!"

Slaughter was traveling in China this week and could not be reached for comment.

Kagan declined to comment to The Daily Princetonian. Harvard Law School spokesman Michael Armini, however, told the Crimson that Kagan has been "focused like a laser beam on being dean of the Law School."

Both Slaughter and Kagan, who have remained friends since their undergraduate years at Princeton, were Sachs scholars with Master's degrees from Oxford and J.D.s from Harvard Law School.

Slaughter later returned to Oxford, where she received a Ph.D. in international relations. She became dean in 2002 and has since spent much of her time rebuilding Princeton's international relations faculty. This past September, Slaughter released the Final Report of the Princeton Project on National Security, a bipartisan, multi-year collaboration that aims to develop a longterm national security strategy for the United States.

Slaughter also served as president of the American Society of International Law from 2002 to 2004. She is currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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Between 1995 and 1999, Kagan served as associate counsel to President Bill Clinton, as well as deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy and deputy director of the domestic policy counsel. Though Clinton nominated her to serve as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the Senate Judiciary Committee refused to hold a hearing for her nomination.

Since 2003, she has been dean of the Harvard Law School, where she has focused on increasing student satisfaction, building new facilities and reviewing the legal curriculum.

According to the Crimson's source, the committee charged with selecting a new Harvard president plans to conduct its final interviews this month, with the goal of completing the search sometime in early February.

The search committee consists of six fellows of the Harvard's Corporation, the university's executive body, and three members of the 30-member Board of Overseers. The election of a president requires the support of the Corporation fellows and an affirmative vote from the Board of Overseers.

Compared to its last presidential search in 2000-01, the committee intends to spend less time eliminating names from the list of potential presidents, instead focusing on examining each of the final candidates, The Crimson reported.

Former president Larry Summers resigned in March 2006 following several controversies, including a firestorm that erupted after he hypothesized that fewer women hold top science and engineering academic positions for reasons of "intrinsic aptitude."