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

Keri Russell Calls ‘The Diplomat’ a Love Letter to Public Servants

A Harvard Kennedy School event looks behind the scenes of the Netflix drama. 

The Year a Beat Poet Squatted at Harvard

In 1954, Gregory Corso moved into Eliot House. How he stayed there is a literary legend.

How Philosophy at Harvard Saved Itself

As humanities shrink across higher education, one department is flourishing. Is its success a fluke, or a roadmap?

Explore More From Current Issue

Bronze statue of a seated figure holding a book, with a campus setting in the background.

As humanities shrink across higher education, one department is flourishing. Is its success a fluke, or a roadmap?

Two fans celebrate in front of a TV showing a football game.

A new Harvard Kennedy School project aims to harness the power of feral fandom.

Illuminated hanging sculptures resembling organic forms, casting warm light in a dim space.

Artists Enzo Camacho and Ami Lien turn a colonial symbol from Cambodia inside out.