Exit Gray, Enter Keohane

Corporation member Hanna Holborn Gray, Ph.D. '57, will step down from the President and Fellows of Harvard College...

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. 

Most popular

Why Harvard Needs International Students

An ed school professor on why global challenges demand global experiences

Two Years of Doxxing at Harvard

What happens when students are publicly named and shamed for their views?

Eat Your Potatoes Mashed, Boiled or Baked, but Hold the Fries

Baked, boiled, and mashed potatoes are better.

Explore More From Current Issue

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio smiling beside the pink cover of her novel "Catalina" featuring a jeweled star and eye.

Being Undocumented in America

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s writing aims to challenge assumptions. 

Man in gray sweater standing in hallway with colorful abstract art on wall.

How Do Single-Celled Organisms Learn and Remember?

A Harvard neuroscientist’s quest to model memory

Renaissance portrait of young man thought to be Christoper Marlowe with light beard, wearing ornate black coat with gold buttons and red patterns.

Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival

Without Christopher Marlowe, there might not have been a Bard.