No Blacks on the Short List for Harvard’s Presidency

In late fall a list of 30 candidates for president of Harvard University was leaked to the press. Included on that list were two African Americans: Ruth Simmons, president of Brown University, and Shirley A. Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

JBHE suspects that the long list was released for window dressing purposes to demonstrate that the university was casting a wide and diversified net in seeking its new president.

Now the Boston Globe reports that the short list for the president’s position includes four individuals: Elena Kagan, dean of Harvard Law School, Drew Gilpin Faust, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Steven E. Hyman, provost at Harvard, and Thomas R. Cech, president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

As expected, Harvard will not have a new president who is African American.

Copyright © 2007. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. All rights reserved.