Harvard University last week announced that a Tufts professor, Leila Fawaz, will serve as president of its Board of Overseers for the 2011−12 academic year.
Fawaz, the Issam M. Fares professor of Lebanese and Eastern Mediterranean Studies, will assume her position after Harvard's commencement in May. She is the founding director of Tufts' Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies and has served on the Harvard board since 2006.
The Board of Overseers is one of two governing bodies at Harvard. The board assists the Harvard administration in an advisory capacity and oversees the visitation and review of Harvard's schools, according to Fawaz. The other body is the recently revamped Harvard Corporation, which supervises finance and business affairs.
Fawaz says she hopes to use her tenure as president of the board to continue to guide Harvard's evolution.
"Together with my fellow overseers, I hope to support [Harvard] President [Drew] Faust and her colleagues in their vigorous efforts to adapt to changing times and to maintain Harvard's standing as one of the best universities in the world," Fawaz said in an e−mail to the Daily.
Members of the board elect the president yearly, according to Harvard's Senior Communications Director John Longbrake.
Robert Shapiro will round out the board's leadership as the vice−chair of the Board's executive committee. Shapiro, a prominent Boston lawyer and former president of the Harvard Alumni Association, will also assume his post in May.
Fawaz predicts that the board's goals for the coming academic year will crystallize in the coming months.
"I anticipate that we will be thinking about such issues as Harvard's evolving international agenda, its efforts to think innovatively about teaching and learning in the college and across Harvard's schools and the ways the different parts of the university can work together both academically and administratively," she said.
Fawaz, who was born in Sudan and raised in Lebanon, received her B.A. and M.A. in history at the American University of Beirut, before receiving her A.M. and Ph.D. in history from Harvard in 1972 and 1979, respectively. Her career at Tufts began in 1979, where she has served as chair of the Department of History and as dean for humanities and arts.
Fawaz succeeds prominent appellate and Supreme Court litigator Seth Waxman, who is also a former solicitor general of the United States, as president. Shapiro will follow Mitchell Adams, executive director of the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative.
Shapiro and Fawaz have served together on the Board as overseers for four years, and Shapiro is looking forward to a period of close cooperation, he told the Daily.
"We're very close colleagues and close friends," he said. "We're really looking forward to working together."
Shapiro served on the Harvard Corporation Governance Review Committee, which in December recommended reforms to the Corporation in response to concerns raised about its effectiveness. These changes included doubling the number of board members and instituting six−year limits on their terms.
"There were many months of study and discussion and careful consideration about what will be good changes," he said.
Fawaz also expressed her excitement about the changes and hopes that Harvard's two governing boards will continue to complement each other's work.
"I am confident that the boards will continue to work collaboratively, and I fully support the decision to enlarge the corporation and its capacity," she said.
Harvard degree−holders elect 30 board members to six−year terms, according to Longbrake. The 2010−11 board that elected Fawaz includes a film producer, an astronaut and the director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
