The governing body of Harvard University has formally launched its search for a successor to President Lawrence Summers, announcing that, in contrast to the last presidential search, students and faculty will have official input in the process.
According to a March 30 statement on the university's Web site, the Harvard Corporation will appoint two committees - one composed of students and the other of faculty members - to advise the search committee, which will be composed of six corporation members and three members from the Board of Overseers, the university's second-highest governing body.
Though the corporation will ultimately choose the new president, one Harvard professor called the decision to include students and faculty in the search "a step forward."
"It's certainly better than not taking account of what the students might want and need ... and what the faculty wants and needs," said Judith Ryan, the professor of German and comparative literature who authored the no-confidence motion that precipitated Summers' resignation. "It's a step forward on the part of the corporation and it shows that they're going to listen to some of what we've been telling them."
Ryan also addressed concerns from many at the university who believe that students and faculty should be included in the final decision-making process.
"Some people think it's not ideal because it's not one big, combined committee, but I can understand why (the corporation) is doing it this way," she said. "There's a number of issues that students don't know about, such as the administrative abilities of various candidates and so forth."
But one group that feels excluded from the search is the graduate student body. In an open letter to the Harvard community dated April 5, the student presidents of all 11 Harvard graduate and professional schools, as well as the president of the Harvard Graduate Council, called on the corporation to include "at least one member of the graduate student body" on the presidential search committee.
There are currently about 13,000 graduate students at Harvard, comprising roughly two-thirds of the total student population. Ryan said the university will soon address the graduate students' concerns, but she is unsure if they will play a role in the presidential search.
Facing his second no-confidence vote from Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences in less than a year, Summers announced in February that he will step down from his position in June. Derek Bok, Harvard's president from 1971 to 1991, will serve as interim president until the end of the presidential search, which is expected to last nine months to a year.
Various media outlets have speculated about Summers' replacement. Among the names often mentioned are two Harvard insiders - Elena Kagan, dean of the university's law school, and Drew Faust, head of the university's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study - as well as several outside candidates.
But most of the outsider candidates floated by the press have ruled themselves out for the position. Princeton University President Shirley Tilghman, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger and Tufts University President Lawrence Bacow have told the student newspapers at their universities that they have no interest in leaving for Harvard.
Former Wellesley College and Duke University President Nannerl Keohane also ruled herself out in a March 15 Boston Globe article, and University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann told the Daily Pennsylvanian in a March 2 article: "I love what I'm doing at Penn and I plan to be here for the foreseeable future."
The office of Brown President Ruth Simmons, one of the few frequently mentioned candidates, has continually declined to comment about leadership issues at Harvard.
