| ashu |
Posted
on 11-Mar-01 12:28 PM
Hi everyone,
As 'the search mechanism on this Web site would show,'
I jad recommended here last November (not that my
recommendation counted for anything!) that Larry
Summers, a former professor of mine, be selected
as Harvard's new president.
I am enormously pleased to read the article (see
below) from today's New York Times.
Now, if I may, let me make another prediction:
Larry will win a Nobel prize in economics in
the next ten years, if not sooner!
oohi
ashu
************************
March 11, 2001
Economist Likely to Lead at Harvard
By JODI WILGOREN
Harvard University plans to name Lawrence H. Summers, an
economist who was secretary of the treasury in the Clinton
administration, as its 27th president today, according to people involved in the selection.
The choice of Mr. Summers, 46, was first reported Friday night in a special issue of The Harvard Crimson, a student newspaper, with the headline "It's Summers!" The Crimson said that Mr. Summers had been recommended by the presidential search committee but still needed the approval of the university's 30- member Board of Overseers.
That group is scheduled to gather today for an emergency meeting in New York, said people involved with the process, after which the new president will be whisked to the campus in Cambridge, Mass., for the official announcement.
The nine-month search to replace Neil L. Rudenstine, who will leave in June, had narrowed in recent weeks to three contenders: Mr. Summers; Lee C. Bollinger, the president of the University of Michigan; and Harvey Fineberg, Harvard's provost. Mr. Summers, Mr. Fineberg and the chairman of the search committee, Robert G. Stone Jr., could not be reached for comment yesterday. Mr. Bollinger, at home in Ann Arbor, Mich., would say only that "it's been an utterly fair and thorough process from my perspective."
Mr. Bollinger, a First Amendment scholar who has been a national leader on higher-education issues, particularly affirmative action, was reported to be the leading candidate in The Boston Globe and other publications. He had a third interview with the presidential search committee at a hotel in New York several weeks ago, and was said to have performed well, but he has neither studied nor taught at Harvard, practically a prerequisite for
the job.
Meanwhile, several prominent alumni, including Mr. Summers's mentor and predecessor as treasury secretary, Robert E. Rubin, lobbied hard on his behalf, people involved in the search said. Mr. Summers earned a Harvard Ph.D. in 1982, soon became the youngest person granted tenure in the university's modern history, at age 28, and spent a decade as a popular professor on campus.
Though some at Harvard were initially uncomfortable with Mr.
Summers's narrow academic focus and lack of experience as a university administrator, his national prominence and global connections were attractive.
Mr. Summers has spent the last several months at the Brookings
Institution in Washington.
He emerged from a list of some 500 nominees, including his former
bosses, Bill Clinton and Al Gore.
The Crimson took enormous pride in its scoop, having also been the first to report Mr. Bollinger's recent interview in New York, as well as Mr. Rudenstine's selection in 1991. Editors admonished the entire staff in an e-mail message on Friday to keep mum about how they got the story.
"It was a great team effort," said the newspaper's president, C. Matthew MacInnis. "This is the one thing that we want."
Copyright 2001 The New York Time
|
