Gutmann makes list for Harvard president

While the Princeton presidential search committee marches on in its quest to find Princeton's 19th president, Harvard University has narrowed down the list in its own presidential search. And at the top of that list is one of Princeton's own.

Politics professor Amy Gutmann, — a former Princeton dean of the faculty and current director of the Center for Human Values — met with Harvard's presidential search committee last week, according to sources close to the Harvard search process.

Harvard's presidential search — like Princeton's — has been confidential and neither university has released or confirmed names up for consideration. Harvard's search began last summer with a list of 500 candidates. The university hopes to name its new president by the end of the academic year.

Though the Harvard presidential search has been kept under wraps since its commencement, both the Boston Globe and the Harvard Crimson have reported that University of Michigan president Lee Bollinger, Harvard Provost Harvey Fineberg and former U.S. treasury secretary Lawrence Summers are at the top of the list.

And according to sources close to the selection process, Amy Gutmann — who graduated magna cum laude from Radcliffe in 1971 — may be the fourth candidate.

Both Harvard spokesperson Joseph Wrinn and Gutmann declined to comment on this part of the search process.

Vice chair of Princeton's presidential search committee Paul Wythes '55 would not specify whether or not Gutmann was on his list of presidential candidates.

"It is not of any interest to anyone to release the names on the list," Wythes said. "It's too bad that someone leaked out this name from Harvard."

Wythes did say that Princeton's search has been conducted separately from Harvard's.

"Because Princeton and Harvard's needs are different, we're doing our search independently from Harvard," he said.

Though not officially confirmed, it is not surprising that Gutmann made the top of the Harvard list.

A friend of Gutmann, Harvard Professor David Wilkins, said Gutmann would suit the role of a university president. "She has deep respect and appreciation for the traditional values of the university," he added. She strives to mold learning at the University to bear on "important contemporary problems," Wilkins said.

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Gutmann served as Princeton's dean of the faculty from 1995 to 1997. Associate Dean of the Faculty Katherine Rohrer said of Gutmann, "She has an enormous appetite for work."

While dean, Gutmann watched over the well-being of the faculty as well as the research, technical and library professional staffs. She was involved in recruiting and selecting new faculty, organized the promotion and tenure process and helped to select departmental chairs.

"She's an excellent leader," Rohrer said, "because she can talk about her values . . . What she wanted to do as Dean of the Faculty was to build and maintain the best faculty of teachers and scholars in the academic world."

Gutmann is the founding director of the Center for Human Values. The center — which currently sponsors 11 freshman seminars and hosts nine visiting fellows — promotes issues in ethics and public affairs.

In forming the center, Gutmann took up President Shapiro's inaugural challenge to increase the role of ethics and human values at the University, according to William Gallaher '92, associate director of the center.

"What was really remarkable at that time was the amazing outpouring of enthusiasm and affection for the Center for Human Values and for Professor Gutmann," he said.

"It's become a very important and highly regarded place for scholars to come together to think deeply and creatively," Wilkins said.

Gutmann earned her Ph.D. in political science from Harvard in 1976 and was a visiting professor at Havard from 1988 to 1989. She has also been a visiting faculty fellow at the University of Maryland. After her time as the dean of the faculty, Gutmann spent one year as the academic adviser to the president.Gutmann has published several books, and her essays on ethics, politics, public affairs and education have appeared in many journals. Her latest book, Democratic Education, is about the importance of education to democracy.

Gutmann is currently on a one-year sabbatical at Stanford University's Center for Advanced Study finishing a book on group identity and democracy.

Princeton politics professor George Kateb, a friend and colleague of Gutmann for 14 years, said Gutmann's WWS 301: Ethics and Public Policy was "one of the most successful courses in the University . . . I think she'd do brilliantly well in any position that she took on."