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The Search for Harvard's Next Leader

On the morning of Wednesday, January 31, Thomas R. Cech, the Nobel Prize–winning head of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, picked up the phone and called the Harvard Crimson. In December, the newspaper had reported that Cech was a candidate for the presidency of Harvard. Now, Cech told the paper, “I have withdrawn my name from consideration.”

Quickly posted online, those words shocked the Harvard campus. Cech wasn’t the first candidate to say no, but his exit was different. It came late in the search process, and the campus buzz had it that he wasn’t just a candidate, he was a leading candidate. With Cech gone, who was left?

Eleven days later, at a news conference filled with flashbulbs and fanfare, the Harvard Corporation, the more powerful of the university’s two governing boards, announced that historian Drew Gilpin Faust would be Harvard’s 28th president. Only a handful of the people present knew that behind its wall of unanimity, the Corporation was keeping a secret: Faust was not its first choice. Had he wanted the job enough, Thomas Cech would have been the star of that press conference. Instead, his exit sparked a hasty sequence of events that led to Faust’s coronation as Harvard’s first female president, hailed as a symbol of progress for women everywhere and widely seen as a rebuke to prior president Lawrence H. Summers.

Faust’s ascension marked the beginning of a new chapter in Harvard history, but the story was almost very different.

Harvard’s presidential search began unexpectedly when the beleaguered Summers resigned on February 21, 2006. Former president Derek Bok agreed to serve as the university’s interim leader for one year—a rescue mission. Hoping to find a new president before Commencement 2007, the Corporation wanted to make a decision by February or early March of this year. For the Corporation fellows, the stakes were high. The internecine feuding of the five-year Summers era had almost paralyzed Harvard’s progress on curricular reform, a capital campaign, science planning, and the development of a new campus in Allston. The Corporation—James (“Jamie”) Richardson Houghton, Derek Bok ex officio, former Duke president Nannerl Keohane, Georgetown legal scholar Patricia King, economist Robert Reischauer, financier James Rothenberg, and former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin—could not afford another failed presidency.

Three internal candidates were immediately discussed: Steven Hyman, the university provost; Elena Kagan, the dean of Harvard Law School; and Drew Faust, a Civil War scholar and dean of the Radcliffe Institute. Each had strengths. A neurobiologist—that would help with Allston—Hyman had done a solid job as provost under challenging conditions. Kagan had shepherded a curricular reform into passage at the notoriously cranky law school, and made it look easy. Faust had transformed Radcliffe from a little-sister school into a credible scholarly center.

But each one also had his or her drawbacks. Hyman and Kagan were appointed by Summers. Once he left, that was like working in the White House the day after Richard Nixon’s helicopter took off. And while Faust was respected within the genteel confines of Radcliffe, she was virtually unknown—and untested—beyond the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS).

The Corporation wanted a president who would advance Summers’ agenda without Summers’ knack for provocation. “The Corporation was very clear with the candidates,” says one source involved in the search process. “You could add to the agenda, sand off the rough edges, but essentially it was set.” (In virtually every conversation about the Corporation, sources insisted upon anonymity to preserve their relationships with the governing body.) A willingness to fundraise was also vital. Harvard had delayed the launch of a multi-billion-dollar capital campaign for years; with Summers regularly embroiled in controversy, the time never felt right.

The Search for Harvard's Next Leader

Early last December, the Crimson reported that the search committee (the Corporation and three members of the Board of Overseers) had compiled a list of about 30 candidates for consideration. (Jamie Houghton was furious about the leak and suspected the Board of Overseers.) Among those seen as plausible were Lawrence Bacow, the president of Tufts; Stanford provost John Etchemendy; Alison Richard, Cambridge University’s vice-chancellor; and Shirley Tilghman, the president of Princeton. “If Shirley Tilghman”—a successful president who happens to be both a molecular biologist and a woman—“had wanted this job it would have been hers in a heartbeat,” says one source close to the process.

Also on the list was Cech, winner of the 1989 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a science foundation with a $15 billion endowment. Few thought Cech a logical choice: The head of HHMI does not raise money, he gives it away. And Cech was committed to maintaining his Boulder, Colo., laboratory, a time commitment no Harvard president could afford. “Still, in the early going, Cech interviewed very well,” says one former overseer.

Between December 1 and January 1, Elena Kagan and Steven Hyman were dropped from consideration. Each had individual liabilities. Kagan is said to have a brusque administrative demeanor—“like dealing with Larry all over again,” says one Harvard dean—while Hyman was rumored to have vented his frustration with Summers too frequently. Yet both were doomed by the concern that they would never be trusted by FAS. “Elena was put aside a long time ago,” says one source close to the Corporation. And according to a professor who knows Hyman, “There were just some people out there for whom it was unthinkable that Larry Summers’ provost could be president.” Neither Kagan nor Hyman, however, was informed that they were no longer under consideration until the choice had been made. In an e-mailed statement praising Faust, Hyman told me, “I was so out of the loop that I was informed of the results by a very polite newspaper reporter.” (At Faust’s request, Hyman has since agreed to stay on as provost.) Kagan heard the bad news from a member of the search committee just hours before the final decision became public.

Meanwhile, several outside candidates had publicly withdrawn their names from consideration. Some weren’t serious contenders, but some, such as Alison Richard, John Etchemendy, and Lawrence Bacow, were. “The fellows were shocked by the number of institutional leaders who pulled out between mid-December and January,” says a source close to the Corporation. “They were sitting there saying, ‘Those denials are only for public consumption,’” certain that when Harvard came calling, the candidates would change their tune—only to find out that they wouldn’t. Whether the Harvard job was losing allure or other universities had grown in appeal, the candidates seemed happy to steer clear of Cambridge.

By mid-January, just two names were left: Cech and Faust. “Cech was the outsider and Drew was the insider,” says the former overseer. “They were neck and neck.”

The Corporation certainly liked Faust. She had regularly met with the fellows during the storm over Summers’ infamous women-in-science speech, when Faust had agreed to chair a committee on the status of women at Harvard. “She built trust with the fellows,” says one Harvard professor. Houghton in particular liked the historian. The senior fellow “was always in Drew’s corner,” says a source familiar with his thinking. “He was always leaning toward [supporting] her.” Corporation treasurer James Rothenberg, says the professor, also “felt comfortable with her.”

The Search for Harvard's Next Leader

Former Harvard president Neil Rudenstine, who preceded Summers and worked closely with Faust on the creation of the Radcliffe Institute, was also supporting the historian. “Neil was really pushing her,” says someone privy to Rudenstine’s efforts. “He made phone calls—lots of ’em. Neil was the man that moved the bodies. Drew owes him.” During the Summers search, Rudenstine’s calls might have hurt a candidate rather than helped, as the Corporation searched for s0meone unlike Rudenstine. Now, the pendulum had swung the other way.

Asked if he had lobbied for Faust, Rudenstine told me, “Throughout the search process, several people were called from time to time to talk about possible candidates, and the search committee quite properly wanted whatever advice and knowledge they could have. Yes, I was asked from time to time about her, and there were other excellent people that I was able to comment on favorably, but I certainly let my own strong admiration for Drew be registered. I thought she was, right from the beginning, one of the clear outstanding candidates.”

But another bloc of support was forming around Cech. “There was a sense of ‘We always have Drew, let’s look at this other person,’” says one source. The scientist’s achievements are not only impressive, they are renowned. And he is as personally charming as he is professionally famous. “He is well liked in the research world and has a magnetic personality,” says someone who knows him. “He just lights up a room.” Plus, his experience felt deeply relevant to Harvard’s future: Cech oversaw the creation of Janelia Farm, a 7oo-acre science campus in northern Virginia, which certainly would have prepared him for Allston planning.

The search committee did have one concern. It asked people who knew him if they thought Cech could cope with being disliked. Explains one colleague of Cech’s, “In his present position as donor, everyone is somewhere between grateful and sycophantic. Being president of Harvard is very different.”

The fellows were lining up in support of Cech. Bob Rubin, who’d been Larry Summers’ most loyal advocate, felt that Harvard needed a strong outsider and liked the idea of a scientist as president. (Cech would have been the first since chemist James Bryant Conant, who took office in 1933.) Robert Reischauer “liked Drew, but thought we needed a scientist,” says a source close to the search. Another person familiar with the Corporation’s sentiments puts it more strongly: “Reischauer was not a fan.” The newest fellow, Patricia King, was not considered an influential voice, while Derek Bok did not feel that he could run the university and play a significant part in the search process. Bok too leaned toward Cech, but for the most part, he stayed on the sidelines.

Cech’s most ardent backers may not have even been on the Corporation. Former Princeton president William Bowen and former Corporation fellow Hanna Gray, who had helped orchestrate the choice of Summers, were both strongly supporting Cech. So too, to a lesser degree, was FAS dean and chemist Jeremy Knowles. Both Knowles and Gray serve on the HHMI board, while Bowen, former head of the Andrew Mellon Foundation, knows Cech from the philanthropic community. All three knew many of the Corporation fellows well, and in their conversations with the search committee all three praised Cech, while Gray and Bowen aggressively pushed for him.

A final Cech supporter was something of a surprise: Nan Keohane. Many on campus believed that Keohane, who was instrumental in Summers’ ouster, wanted a woman president. “The word is that Nan really maneuvered through this—that she sees in Drew a younger version of herself,” says one source, even though Faust, 59, is only seven years younger than Keohane. “She played a very dominant role.”

That perception seems widespread, but a source close to the Corporation insists it’s flat-out wrong. “Nan is very politically astute,” explains this source. “She might have wanted a woman president, but she didn’t want this one. She wanted Cech.” Another source close to the Corporation confirms that assessment.

Keohane declined to answer questions about the search, but she wrote in an e-mail, “We are very enthusiastic about this decision; it’s a great day for Harvard, and for higher education.”

The Search for Harvard's Next Leader

Jamie Houghton was feeling the pressure. During search committee meetings, he could be frustratingly opaque. “He is a man of few words,” says someone who knows him. “He believes that the job of the board is to back the CEO, and he gets very irritable if someone makes trouble—he doesn’t like disagreements.” At the same time, three sources who know everyone involved use words such as “intimidated” to describe Houghton’s relationship with Hanna Gray, Bob Rubin, and Jeremy Knowles. “You see it all the time,” says one. Adds another, “Jamie is not dumb by any stretch, but he is intimidated by all these towering intellects.” If Gray and Rubin felt so strongly about Cech, who was Houghton to argue?

By late January, the search committee was ready to offer the presidency to Cech. According to Harvard’s charter, the Board of Overseers, the larger of its two governing boards, must approve the Corporation’s pick, and it had scheduled a meeting on Saturday, February 3. University bylaws stipulate that the Corporation must forward the name of its choice to the Overseers for consideration four days in advance of that group’s meeting. And so the fellows reached out to Cech to finalize the deal. “They were negotiating with him and putting Faust on ice,” says one source. The Corporation wanted to know if Cech would give up his lab and commit to fundraising.

While no official offer was made, “it was a case of, ‘Look, you’re our guy, let’s talk about these issues,’” says this source. “There’s no question he was the man. The list of donors to call had been drawn up. They’d even started approaching certain overseers, saying, ‘It’s Cech.’” Other sources close to the Corporation agreed that Cech was the board’s choice. To the Corporation’s surprise, Cech wouldn’t play ball: He wasn’t crazy about fundraising, and he had no intention of giving up his research. “They just couldn’t come to terms,” says one person familiar with the negotiations and puzzled by why the Corporation had not foreseen these stumbling blocks. “How do you get so far down the line where you’re going to announce it to the Overseers in four days and you don’t know that you’ve got a big problem?”

Frustrated with these demands coming so late in the process, Cech informed Jamie Houghton that he would no longer be a candidate. Because his candidacy was publicly known, he would make a public announcement of his withdrawal so that, when the presidential choice was announced, it would not look as if he had been passed over. Houghton, displeased, asked him to keep secret the deliberations of the search process. Once the news was out, the Harvard rumor mill quickly circulated the spin that, in fact, Cech was passed over—he wasn’t getting the job, and the Corporation had “allowed” him to make a statement as a face-saving measure. Both suggestions were true only in the most literal sense.

Cech’s withdrawal put the Corporation in a delicate position. Drew Faust was now the only candidate, and everyone following the search knew it; if she was not quickly picked, the delay would suggest that the Corporation lacked confidence, perhaps wanted to consider other names. And if the Corporation did choose Faust, but after weeks rather than days, she would be perceived as a pick about whom the governing board was less than enthusiastic.

At the same time, there were limits to how rapidly the Corporation could progress. After Cech withdrew on Wednesday, the Corporation could not move Faust’s name to the Board of Overseers for its Saturday meeting because of the mandated four-day waiting period. Instead, there was a clumsy attempt to find new agendas for the Overseers’ meeting, a ham-handed maneuver that irritated some members of that group.

The Search for Harvard's Next Leader

On February 4—Super Bowl Sunday—the search committee ate dinner with Faust in Boston, in the State Street offices of law firm WilmerHale, where overseer and search committee member William F. Lee is co-managing partner. That evening’s lengthy session suggested that Faust was no fait accompli. Rubin questioned her aggressively. According to one source familiar with the meeting, “It was, ‘Are you tough enough? Can you make hard decisions?’” As in the past, Faust came across as articulate and forceful. In the end, Rubin grudgingly agreed to support the choice: The Corporation would send Drew Faust’s name to the Overseers for approval at a special meeting of that board on Sunday, February 11.

Meanwhile, the days after Cech’s withdrawal were showing the danger of even a short delay. On February 2, Harvard minister Peter Gomes had published a Crimson editorial titled, “Don’t Rush, Get It Right.” In a learned but cryptic manner, Gomes, known for his strong bonds with Harvard alumni, wrote, “The temptation will be great to hurry up and get this appointment settled. This is a temptation stoutly to be resisted.” According to one veteran Harvard professor, since there was only one remaining candidate, “that was a clear statement: ‘Don’t appoint Drew Faust.’ There was consternation.”

Cech’s withdrawal had made the process a referendum on Faust, and the arguments were starting to get nasty—and public. On February 4, the Boston Globe ran an article describing Faust as the leading candidate. In its first sentence, the article called Faust a “Harvard dean who has never run a major institution,” subsequently noting that Radcliffe is “the smallest academic unit at Harvard and the only one with no students or full-time faculty.” The article also suggested that Faust had been “a closer adviser [to Summers] than either Kagan or Hyman.” Both characterizations suggested that an anti-Faust constituency was using the newspaper to subvert her candidacy. For their part, Faust supporters were rallying around their champion. The press office at the University of Pennsylvania, where Faust taught before coming to Harvard, was busily lining up interviews with its president, Amy Gutmann, on Faust’s behalf. Such politicking threatened to turn the process into a farce. “If the Corporation had waited much longer, Drew would have been severely damaged,” says one Harvard dean.

On Thursday, February 8, the Crimson broke the story that Faust was the Corporation’s choice; the Boston Globe and the New York Times followed up. The secret was out. On Sunday, the Overseers would unanimously vote to confirm Drew Faust as Harvard’s next president. Harmony reigned—Derek Bok, Neil Rudenstine, and Larry Summers would all issue laudatory quotes to the press—but privately, Summers was seething. “Larry is pissed,” says a friend of Summers. “If you put yourself in his shoes, this wasn’t going to be an easy day for him, whomever they chose. But he sees this as the ultimate repudiation—they picked his complete and total opposite.”

On the afternoon of Sunday, February 11, Faust and the Corporation held a press conference at the Barker Center, home to various humanities offices. While the fellows looked on in approval, Faust declared that she was “deeply honored by the trust the governing boards have placed in me.” She added, “Our shared enterprise is to make Harvard’s future even more remarkable than its past.” As she explained, “I am a historian. I have spent a lot of time thinking about the past, and about how it shapes the future.”

The Harvard Corporation has also considered how the past—what is known, what is unknown, what is obscured—shapes the future. That is why, according to the Corporation’s mandate, the records of Harvard’s recent presidential search will soon lie entombed in the underground archives of Pusey Library. There they will rest for 50 years, sealed, secret, safe from the prying eyes of journalists and scholars, until long after the presidency of Drew Faust is over, long after its histories are written.