Ellwood Selected As New KSG Dean

David T. Ellwood ’75, the Harvard economist who helped craft the Clinton administration’s anti-poverty strategy, will be the next dean of the Kennedy School of Government (KSG).

Ellwood, who is the Scott M. Black professor of political economy at the KSG, played an influential advisory role in President Clinton’s 1992 campaign and was assistant secretary of health and human services from 1993 to 1995.

Students and faculty packed the school’s John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum yesterday afternoon in anticipation of the announcement, and the crowd cheered when outgoing Dean Joseph S. Nye took the podium.

Nye hailed University President Lawrence H. Summers’ decision to tap Ellwood for the KSG’s top post.

“Fortunately, we have a wise philosopher-king as president,” Nye said.

Nye said Summers has amassed an impressive record of appointing able deans over his two-and-a-half years as president. “Today, he has not only equaled that record, he has surpassed it,” Nye said.

Summers introduced Ellwood as “my longtime friend,” noting that the two had briefly shared an office when both were graduate students in Harvard’s economics department, and they co-authored a paper entitled “Poverty in America: Is Welfare the Answer or the Problem?” in 1985.

Summers called Ellwood “a penetrating scholar and analyst whose work on inequality has had a profound influence...on public policy.”

Ellwood’s students and colleagues praised the dean-designate’s inspirational teaching style, administrative skills and cutting-edge research.

“He’s just a terrific selection: young, energetic and passionate about the Kennedy School and its mission,” said KSG Executive Dean J. Bonnie Newman.

“He’s fabulous,” gushed Cristiana Pasca, a native of Romania who was a student in Ellwood’s introductory microeconomics course last year.

“I had no exposure to economics. I came from a communist country,” said Pasca, “He totally opened my perspective.”

Ellwood, 50, said he would use the next weeks to hear student and faculty perspectives on how to make the school the “flagship of the University.”

“Next fall, I propose to come forward to you with a more concrete set of ideas, and we’ll take it from there,” he said.

K-SCHOOL PIONEER

Ellwood joined the KSG faculty in 1980, just two years after the school’s founding.

He said that when he received his doctorate from Harvard, many people advised him to “do the traditional thing” and teach in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Economics, rather than take a post at the newly-formed grad school.

But Ellwood said his choice to accept an assistant professorship at the KSG was “the second best decision I ever made in my life.”

He then pointed to his wife Marilyn, who stood in the JFK Jr. Forum audience, and—as audience members applauded approvingly—said marrying her was the “best decision I ever made.”

“He grew up in the [Kennedy] School and embodies the school’s mission of excellence in public problem-solving,” said Dillon Professor of Government Graham T. Allison Jr., who led the KSG as dean from the school’s founding in 1978 until 1989.

“He has been fascinated by one of the most intractable of problems—persistent poverty—and has been determined in searching for ways to address it,” Allison said.

In his 1988 book Poor Support: Poverty in the American Family, Ellwood advocated universal health care, raising the minimum wage and setting stricter time limits on welfare benefits.

JOURNEY FROM CURRIER HOUSE

Ellwood will be the first Harvard College alum to be dean of the KSG. As an undergraduate, Ellwood—an economics concentrator in Currier House—was involved in the American Field Service, a cultural exchange program. He was also an avid hiker and had already become keenly interested in politics.

Ellwood, whose daughter Andrea is a sophomore in Pforzheimer House, is a popular guest lecture in the introductory economics course Social Analysis 10 and a member of the University’s Allston planning task force on undergraduate life.

He said the KSG’s “strategic location” near the Anderson Bridge means it can serve as a link between Harvard’s older campus and the new facilities planned for across the river.

Ellwood repeatedly emphasized what seems to be his motto for the KSG’s direction—”partnership, excellence, impact”—and said he hopes the school will connect with undergraduates who “hunger for public policy and public interest sorts of things.”

MR. ELLWOOD GOES TO WASHINGTON

Shortly after becoming the KSG’s academic dean in 1992, Ellwood left the post to join Clinton’s welfare policy team.

“I am extremely proud of my public service,” Ellwood said yesterday. But he also noted that he was disappointed by some aspects of the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, the compromise struck by Clinton and Congressional Republicans.

At the time, Ellwood, who already had left the administration, publicly criticized the compromise provision, calling it “welfare reform in name only” and urging Clinton to veto the bill.

When Ellwood returned to the KSG at the beginning of the 1995-1996 academic year, then-U.S. Senator Daniel P. Moynihan, D-N.Y., called his departure from the Clinton administration “a tragedy.”

“[Ellwood’s] thinking was seminal, but he’s been undone,” lamented Moynihan, a former Harvard professor who died last year.

“I left [Washington] because it was better for my family,” said Ellwood in a conversation with The Crimson yesterday. But, he added, “it was also clear that the direction things were headed was very different from what I hoped.”

‘SENSITIVE AND CARING’

Ellwood returned to Harvard in 1995 amidst speculation that he would fill the then-vacant KSG dean post.

“Several sources close to Ellwood have speculated that the job is his if he wants it,” The Crimson reported in April 1995.

The speculation turned out to be false.

Ellwood said he doesn’t know if he would have accepted the deanship if the University had offered it to him in 1995.

“This is the right time for me,” he said yesterday. “I can devote myself to the job in a way that would have been very difficult back then.”

Ellwood served on the University’s living wage committee that was formed in 2001 in the deal that ended student protesters’ 21-day Mass. Hall sit-in.

Newman, who was also on the living wage committee, said Ellwood is a “sensitive and caring person, which is very helpful particularly when you’re dealing with people who are feeling disenfranchised.”

“In my conversations with him, I sense he’s a hands-on manager,” Newman said.

CLOSE TO THE VEST

Summers’ appointment of Ellwood culminates a seven-month search to fill the post being vacated by Nye, who said last September he will step down as dean to focus on teaching and research.

Associate Academic Dean Julie B. Wilson, speaking to The Crimson last week, said the search was “very tightly-held internally.”

She said Summers was “very generous in reaching out widely” to students, administrators and faculty.

But while Summers culled input from a broad range of sources, he kept details of the search close to the vest.

Ellwood said Summers officially offered him the post in a telephone conversation over the weekend.

The decision to accept, Ellwood said, “was not very hard. I love this place.”

Newman was informed of the selection Tuesday night, and Summers announced the appointment to the KSG faculty just minutes before appearing with Ellwood in the JFK Jr. Forum yesterday afternoon.

“There’s been an element of anxiety about not knowing who the new leader of the school is going to be,” Newman said, adding that “people are not only relieved but delighted” by Ellwood’s selection.

Summers said he had vetted “many strong candidates...it has been a tremendously educational and satisfying process for me.”

“It’s the mark of a great institution that when a great person decides to step down, that there are other great people ready to take his place,” Summers said.

SHOULDERS OF A GIANT

“We all will be standing on the extraordinarily broad shoulders of Joe [Nye] as we look into the future,” Ellwood said yesterday.

Seeking to highlight the remarkable changes Nye brought to the school, Ellwood said that “those of us who were around eight-and-a-half years ago can hardly recognize the place.”

Nye took KSG’s reins in December 1995, 19 months after his predecessor Albert Carnesale was elevated to the title of University provost.

“At that time, the biggest challenge was that the Kennedy School might become Harvard’s second business school,” Nye said.

In 1996, Nye’s first full year as dean, 45 percent of the KSG’s master’s of public policy (MPP) class took private sector jobs upon graduation. Nye increased funding for the Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP) to provided financial aid to alums who pursue public service careers.

The KSG now spends more of its operating budget on financial aid than any other Harvard school, and the percentage of MPP graduates taking for-profit positions fell to 20 percent in 2003.

In recent months, Nye has faced criticism from students over a plan to cap LRAP’s growth, but since the beginning of April he has raised $50,000 from donors to insure that the current class of KSG students receives full LRAP benefits.

Student leaders who have pressed the school to increase aid for graduates in the public sector praised Ellwood’s appointment.

“He’s committed his life to eradicating poverty,” said Kennedy School Student Government president Tim Sultan. “We couldn’t have a better champion for our mission.”

In the weeks before the announcement, student government leaders concluded that “Ellwood would be, as far as LRAP goes, the number one choice,” Sultan said.

Nye said that he and Ellwood are “both committed to raising funds for financial aid in general, and LRAP is part of that.”

Ellwood told a cheering Forum crowd, “We must ensure that the service provided by students from all parts of the University will be limited only by their imagination and their ability, not by their financial resources.”

But Ellwood must also tend to the fiscal health of the historically cash-strapped school. The KSG ran a massive $5.9 million deficit in fiscal year 2002, but Nye’s belt-tightening measures—which included the elimination of 47 staff and adjunct faculty positions—generated a more modest $84,495 surplus last year.

And speaking with The Crimson yesterday, Nye expressed hope that in his last days as dean, loyal donors will help the KSG find firmer financial footing.

“One of the things about your final time as dean is that some people are willing to give a sort of ‘exit present,’” Nye said.

CAN HE BE A ‘PLAYER-COACH’?

Ellwood speaks enthusiastically about his current research into “the changing nature of American families.”

Nye, who has continued with his ground-breaking scholarship on international relations even while serving as dean, said that Ellwood will face a “trade-off” between administrative responsibilities and his academic work.

“As Larry Summers once jokingly told me, I’m one of the few ‘player-coaches,’” Nye said.

Ellwood said he hopes to continue his academic work but that his “overwhelming emphasis” will be on his administrative role.

“Being dean will be my absolute first priority,” he said.

—Staff writer Daniel J. Hemel can be reached at hemel@fas.harvard.edu.