The President and Fellows of Harvard College, as the executive governing board of the University is officially titled, has returned to full strength with the appointment of two new members. Conrad K. Harper, J.D. '65, a lawyer, and Herbert S. Winokur Jr. '65, Ph.D. '67, a business executive turned investment manager, were named to the seven-member Corporation on February 6; their service will begin by the next academic year. They succeed Judith Richards Hope, J.D. '64, and Richard A. Smith '46--a lawyer and business executive, respectively--whose decisions to step down were reported previously (see "Changing of the Guard," March-April, page 78).
"Conrad Harper is an outstanding lawyer and a devoted humanist with significant government and international experience as well as deep in-
terests in scholarly pursuits ranging well beyond the law," said President Neil L. Rudenstine, in announcing the appointments. "Herbert Winokur is a broad-gauged and highly respected business executive whose varied career has kept him in close contact with Harvard and higher education, and who has a strong sense of the nature of universities and the human dynamics of complex organizations."
Harper, who is a partner in the New York law firm of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, becomes the first African American to serve as a Fellow of Harvard College. The Detroit native graduated from Howard University and then spent the first five years of his legal career as an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund before joining Simpson Thacher in 1971 and becoming a partner in 1974. From 1993 to 1996, he was legal adviser--the senior legal officer--of the United States Department of State. He then returned to his law firm, where he remains active in litigation. The first African American to serve as president of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York (1990-92), Harper is also a trustee and former cochair of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and has served as a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague.
Outside his legal work, Harper has, among other activities, been a director of both the Academy of Political Science and the Academy of American Poets. He has served on the boards of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Public Library, and was for five years chancellor of the Episcopal Diocese of New York.
"My joy today is exceeded only by my sense of duty to be of service to Harvard," Harper said. "I very much look forward to joining President Rudenstine, the other members of the Corporation, and the Overseers in our work on behalf of the entire Harvard community."
Since completing undergraduate and doctoral studies in applied mathematics at Harvard, Herbert Winokur, a native of Columbus, Georgia, has pursued a varied business career, including stints at a start-up management consulting firm, the nonrailroad portions of Penn Central Corporation, a corporate-turnaround firm, and Pinehurst Inc. (the resort community). Since 1987, he has been chairman and chief executive officer of Capricorn Holdings Inc., based in Greenwich, Connecticut, and managing general partner of three affiliated partnerships that invest in corporate restructuring transactions.
Winokur has served on the Committee on University Resources, which oversees fundraising efforts, since 1989, and on the board of directors of the Harvard Management Company, which manages the endowment and other investments, since 1995. He has also cochaired reunion fundraising for his College class. His recent academic service includes the advisory board for the interfaculty initiative on mind, brain, and behavior; the technology and education planning committee of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences; and the visiting committee of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.
Away from Cambridge, Winokur has been a cochair of the New-York Historical Society, a director of Second Stage Theatre, and a member both of the Council on Foreign Relations and of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Council.
"Harvard's faculty and students continue to have a major influence on the world, from basic research to education and policymaking," Winokur said. "It is a great privilege to be invited to join the Corporation. I have enjoyed my long involvement with Harvard, going back to undergraduate and graduate days, and look forward to working with the administration and the faculty in the years to come."
