Harvard Appoints Interim Winthrop House Leaders

Harvard College dean Rakesh Khurana today announced that Mark Gearan ’78 and Mary Herlihy-Gearan will serve as interim deans of Winthrop House for the new academic year. They succeed Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., Climenko clinical professor of law, and Stephanie R. Robinson, lecturer on law, whose Winthrop appointment was not renewed following a tumultuous semester punctuated by student protests over Sullivan’s legal representation of movie producer Harvey Weinstein in criminal proceedings concerning his alleged sexual assaults and harassment of many women, and by a College survey of the climate within the House during the then-faculty deans’ tenure (see “Faculty-Dean Denouement,” July-August, page 27).

Mark Gearan is director of the Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics. He was president of Hobart and William Smith Colleges from 1999 to 2017, after serving as director of the Peace Corps. He lived in Winthrop House as an undergraduate—as did the Gearans’ daughter, Madeleine ’15 (daughter Kathleen is enrolled at Hobart and William Smith). Prior to the couple’s service at Hobart and William Smith, Mary Herlihy-Gearan worked for two members of the U.S. Congress and on the presidential campaign of Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, LL.B. ’60.

A search for a permanent dean will begin this fall.

Read the announcement here.