Exit Gray, Enter Keohane

Hanna Holborn GrayNannerl O. Keohane
Courtesy of Hanna Holborn GrayCourtesy of Duke University

Corporation member Hanna Holborn Gray, Ph.D. '57, will step down from the President and Fellows of Harvard College (as the University's executive governing board is formally known) at the end of the academic year. Of that work, begun in 1997, and her six previous years on the Board of Overseers, Gray said, "I very much appreciate the range and quality of postdoctoral education afforded by service on Harvard's governing boards." An historian who was provost and then acting president of Yale, Gray was president of the University of Chicago from 1978 to 1993. She also chairs the board of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, is a regent of the Smithsonian Institution, and chaired the board of trustees of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. During her recent Harvard service, she played a leading role in the search that resulted in the selection of Lawrence H. Summers to succeed Neil L. Rudenstine as president. In the announcement of her pending retirement from her Harvard post, Summers cited Gray as "a strong and consistent voice for core academic values and high academic standards, while affirming the central importance of excellent liberal arts education within our leading universities." Gray's successor, announced on December 5, will be Nannerl O. Keohane, LL.D. '93, past president of Duke and Wellesley. Keohane is a political scientist, as is her husband, Robert O. Keohane, Ph.D. '66, former Stansfield professor of international peace. 

You might also like

The Evolutionary Case for Exercise

The off-label prescription from our hunter-gatherer ancestors

Art Across Borders

At the Lahore Biennale, artists respond to the climate crisis. 

Football: Harvard 35-Holy Cross 34

The Crimson outlasts the Crusaders. Next up: Princeton

Most popular

Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?

Historian Alexander Keyssar on why the unpopular institution has prevailed 

The Evolutionary Case for Exercise

The off-label prescription from our hunter-gatherer ancestors

The Teen Brain

It’s a paradoxical time of development. These are people with very sharp brains, but they’re not quite sure what to do with them...

More to explore

America's Housing Problem—Explained

America’s housing problem—and what to do about it

How Does the Brain Interpret Language in Real-Time?

New research on how the brain uses sounds to form words and create meaning.

Ecological Edges: Darren Sears’s Watercolor Landscapes

The surreal, artistic cartography of Darren Sears