Tufts University President Lawrence Bacow won't be leaving the Hill for Harvard any time soon.
In yesterday's Boston Globe article on Harvard University's search for a new president, Bacow was named as one of several possible replacements for outgoing Harvard University President Lawrence Summers. The Globe said that Bacow was unavailable for comment.
In an e-mail to the Daily, however, Bacow showed no signs of wanting to leave Tufts. "I am very happy at Tufts and have no desire to leave," he said. "I took this job expecting it to be my last. I still do."
Summers was appointed as president of Harvard University in 2001. In early 2005, he set off a media storm when he suggested that innate differences between the sexes might be responsible for low numbers of women in mathematics and the sciences.
In March of 2005, the faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University placed a vote of no confidence in Summers. Facing a second vote of no confidence, Summers announced his resignation on Feb. 21, 2006.
He will continue to serve as president for the remainder of Harvard's spring 2006 semester.
Derek C. Bok, who was president of the university for two decades - from 1971 to 1991 - will serve as interim president starting July 1. Speculation as to who will replace Summers continues.
Bacow said that the Globe article was "not a complete surprise," as the Chronicle of Higher Education had mentioned his name as a possible replacement in a Mar. 3 article.
In that article, Bacow was listed as among the six most popular names that consultants and current presidents predicted might be sought as replacements for Summers.
Other names on the list included Princeton University President Shirley M. Tilghman and Brown University President Ruth J. Simmons. Simmons, if chosen, would be the first black president of Harvard.
According to the Globe article, the name that has been most touted as a replacement for Summers is Nannerl O. Keohane, who currently sits on the board of the Harvard Corporation and currently teaches at Princeton University. She has spent years as president of both Duke University and Wellesley College.
But according to the article, Keohane said that she was not interested in the position. "I'm not available," she said. "I want to tell people to please stop putting me on the lists of potential candidates."
Other names mentioned by the Globe included University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann, who recently told Penn's student newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian, that she planned "to be here [at Penn] for the foreseeable future."
