Harvard Smartens Up

Harvard University is apparently preparing to name its first woman president, Dr. Drew Gilpin Faust, a historian who heads up the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies.

According to today's New York Times piece, Dr. Faust was chosen despite her lack of experience in running a large organization (the Institute's annual $17 million budget is a tiny fraction of the University's $3+ billion).

No matter. The key line from the Times was as follows:

Dr. Faust was apparently perceived by the nine-member search committee as an adroit administrator with considerable people skills, a valued commodity after the polarization that occurred under Dr. Summers, particularly among women on the faculty.

Friend of mine used to say, if you need to hire something that climbs a tree, hire a squirrel. You could train a turkey to do it, but it's a heck of a lot simpler to go with the squirrel. Or, "hire for temperament; train for skills."

In this case, being an adroit administrator who gets along with others was the drop dead requirement after the  interpersonally tone-deaf Lawrence Summers tromped through the Cambridge china shop last year.

If you think this kind of approach is mushy-headed, watch the current PBS series on The Supreme Court and read the accompanying book by David Rosen.  The big point here is that the justices who've had the greatest impact on our country were not those who were necessarily the most intelligent legal scholars but those able to best influence their colleagues by virtue of their interpersonal relationships.

Sounds like the Board of Overseers may have put some of that vaunted brainpower to good use this time.

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