Search for WWS dean begins

Sociology professor Douglas Massey GS ’78 will chair the recently formed committee charged with finding a replacement for Anne-Marie Slaughter ’80 as dean of the Wilson School, President Tilghman announced in an e-mail to Wilson School faculty, students and staff Tuesday afternoon.

Tilghman said in the e-mail that the committee, which will hold its first meeting Monday, aims to present Tilghman and Provost Christopher Eisgruber ’83 with two or three potential candidates by the end of June. In an interview Thursday with The Daily Princetonian, she added that she hopes to appoint Slaughter’s successor by the start of the fall semester.

Slaughter, who had been dean of the Wilson School since September 2002, resigned the position last month to become director of the State Department’s policy-planning staff. Acting Associate Dean of the Wilson School Mark Watson is currently serving as interim dean.

The search for the next dean will commence after administrators have thoroughly evaluated the Wilson School’s present status and future ambitions, Tilghman said in the interview.

“What Professor Massey intends to do is to first solicit from members of the committee views about where the school is today [and] what challenges and opportunities … there [will] be for the dean,” she explained. “How you think about the school and where it is today informs how you think who would be a powerful candidate for the deanship.”

While Slaughter’s appointment was partially based on her experience with international policy, Tilghman said she “[doesn’t] think there is going to be the same urgency to focus on any one … academic program of the school.”

“I think that the school is in a very different place before Dean Slaughter arrived six years ago,” Tilghman added.

The committee has no formal list of qualifications or necessary credentials to guide them in their search, committee member and economics professor Esteban Rossi-Hansberg said.

Rossi-Hansberg declined to name any potential candidates. “It’s really open at this stage,” he said, adding that candidates will be considered from both inside and outside the University.

Tilghman said she hopes this will facilitate being able “to catch a wide net” of initial candidates. Committee members will look for someone who possesses the qualities essential to serving as the head of a prestigious public-policy school, she added.

In addition to having the administrative skills to manage a large school, the person appointed as the new dean of the Wilson school will also have to be esteemed within academia, Rossi-Hansberg explained.

The search committee is composed of faculty associated with the Wilson School from the politics, economics, ecology and evolutionary biology, psychology and history departments.

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“I wanted to ask a group of very distinguished faculty representing the broad cross-section of disciplines that are represented in the school,” Tilghman said, adding that she chose individuals who have been at the Wilson School for many years as well as those who have joined recently to ensure the inclusion of “lots of diverse perspectives on the school.”

Committee members Brandice Canes-Wrone ’93, Gene Grossman, Stephen Macedo GS ’87, Emily Pronin, David Wilcove GS ’85, Deborah Yashar, Julian Zelizer and Massey did not reply to requests for comment.

The last search for a Wilson School dean began after former dean Michael Rothschild announced on Oct. 1, 2001, that he was stepping down on June 30, 2002. At that time, Tilghman appointed politics professor Larry Bartels to chair the search committee for Rothschild’s replacement.

“We will be talking to a wide variety of people in and out of [the Wilson School] regarding issues facing the school and qualifications for the deanship before proceeding to consideration of any specific candidates,” Bartels said in a November 2001 interview with the ‘Prince.’ Bartels did not respond to a request to comment.

On May 14, 2002, the University announced that Slaughter would become dean of the Wilson School effective Sept. 1 of that year.