University General Counsel To Step Down

Vice President and General Counsel Anne Taylor announced yesterday that she will be stepping down this fall after six years as the University’s top lawyer.

Taylor said in an e-mail sent to colleagues and friends that she was stepping down in order to allow University President Lawrence H. Summers to put in place his own team of top administrators.

“A year or so after [former President Neil L. Rudenstine] took office, the University’s then-General Counsel stepped aside, in the interest of allowing a new President to build his own team,” Taylor wrote.

“I remember feeling at the time that that was the right thing to do and I admired the graceful example set by my predecessor,” she wrote.

In an e-mail Taylor wrote that her departure was a chance “to undertake the next exciting chapter in my life” and was not related to her job performance.

In a separate letter, Summers thanked Taylor for her service and praised her leadership of Harvard’s team of lawyers.

“Time and again, she has demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to grasp the practical and human aspects of complicated problems and to move people toward creative and well-considered solutions,” Summers wrote.

As general counsel, Taylor was responsible for legal matters ranging from suits against the University to union negotiations.

As one of five vice-presidents, Taylor served as a top advisor to Rudenstine and then, this year, to Summers.

Throughout her tenure, Taylor worked closely with presidents and other top administrators on labor-related questions.

This year, Taylor sat on the Harvard Committee on Employment and Contracting Policy, which recommended the University reopen negotiations with its biggest contractors and establish a parity wage for outsourced labor.

Last year, Taylor was central to negotiations that ended a Mass. Hall sit-in conducted by students protesting the University’s labor policies.

As a member of the General Counsel’s office in the 1980s, Taylor was University President Derek C. Bok’s point person on many labor issues, and in 1988 led the campaign against clerical and technical workers efforts to unionize.

But union organizers say Taylor was among the first to recognize the futility of the University’s efforts and convinced senior leadership to change Harvard’s course.

Taylor became good friends with Kris Rondeau, who led workers’ efforts to organize into the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW).

“It’s probably a very big deal that Anne figured out that [opposing the union] was something that was not only not good but probably dangerous for the University,” Rondeau said.

Relations have improved over the past decade. “Especially in the last few years we have developed a very constructive union-managment relationship, and I think Anne was primarily responsible for that,” HUCTW Treasurer Donene Williams said.

Former and current administrators who worked with Taylor praised her as one of Harvard’s most capable administrators.

“Anne Taylor was the single best administrator I’ve known at Harvard,” said former Vice President for Government, Community and Public Affairs James H. Rowe.

“This is a big institutional loss,” Rowe said. “It’s too bad for Harvard, but she’s going out in a very classy way.”

Taylor wrote that she leaves with “the highest hopes for Harvard and for our new President’s future success.”

Taylor came to Harvard in 1983 after stints as a staff attorney for the National Labor Relations Board and as general counsel to the Office of Inspector General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Summers wrote in his letter that he intends to begin a search for Taylor’s successor in the near future.

In 1996, Taylor’s immediate predecessor Margaret H. Marshall stepped down to become a justice on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

Rudenstine conducted a year-long nationwide search, during which Taylor served as acting vice-president and general counsel. In 1997, Taylor was permanently appointed to the post.

“It’s the most interesting legal job, certainly in the not-for-profit sector, possibly in the legal landscape of the whole country,” Rowe said.

—Staff writer David H. Gellis can be reached at gellis@fas.harvard.edu.