The buzz around Harvard University is that the university could soon name its first woman president. But gender is hardly the only issue on the table as a nine-member committee tries to fill one of academia’s most prestigious jobs.
Other factors include whether 21st-century Harvard needs a scientist at the helm, and whether an insider or a fresh face would best lead the university after the tumultuous five-year tenure of former president Lawrence Summers.
Another wrinkle: Several prominent potential candidates don’t seem to want the job.
Harvard isn’t commenting, but The Harvard Crimson student newspaper, citing anonymous sources, has reported that final interviews are underway. It has focused on several leading contenders. Internal candidates include law school dean Elena Kagan, historian Drew Gilpin Faust and provost Steven E. Hyman. External candidates include Dr. Thomas R. Cech, president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and a number of other scientists.
Pressure to pick a woman intensified with the uproar over Summers’ comments that genetic differences between the genders may explain the dearth of women in top science jobs. The growing financial importance of research also could pressure Harvard to tap a scientist for the top job, something it hasn’t done since 1933.
But Harvard also could go the other way, picking a nonscientist who could rise above turf battles and reassure the rest of the school that America’s oldest and richest university isn’t becoming a giant science lab.
“No one’s going to know everything about everything,” says Dr. Harry Lewis, a former Harvard dean and author of a recent book on the school. “The test is whether they know what they don’t know and have good judgment about the people that they get advice from.”
