Martha Minow Named Next Harvard Law School Dean

Martha Minow, a long-time Harvard Law School professor, will become the school’s next Dean on July 1, University President Drew G. Faust announced Thursday, ending a secretive search process to replace former Dean Elena Kagan.

In the last few weeks of the search, Minow emerged as a top contender along with acting Dean Howell E. Jackson and Professors John F. Manning ’82 and David Wilkins ’77, according to individuals on the faculty familiar with the search. Faust made the final selection.

Minow’s candidacy was boosted by her central role in the Law School’s curricular reform process, a key element of Kagan’s legacy. Minow's experience there made her the preferred choice of some on the faculty, who said the curricular reform would require further attention from the next dean if it was to become a lasting part of the student experience. Those reforms are seen as one of the key reasons for rising student happiness at a school that a few years ago was all too well known for its neglect of student life.

But while Kagan's deanship was marked by expansion, the beginning of Minnow's tenure is almost certain to reflect the opposite.

She will start her job shortly after the University asked the Law School to cut 10 percent from its operating budget in order to cope with a precipitous fall in Harvard's endowment. And though much of the budget for the coming fiscal year will have been written by Jackson, the acting dean, tough economic times are likely to continue, and Harvard has said support from the endowment will fall still further in the following fiscal year.

That will mean hard choices for Minow, who now takes on the task of determining where to slash.

This responsibility falls on the shoulders of a professor with little experience managing large budgets, said several faculty members at the Law School who worry about Minow’s ability to quickly assess and cope with the school’s financial situation. Though she has spent nearly three decades at the school, Minow has had few major budgetary responsibilities during her time there.

One faculty member, who requested anonymity to preserve their relationship with the incoming dean, said that Minow's critics say she is not sufficiently able to “say no”—a dangerous quality at a time when hard decisions will have to be made about what programs will be downsized or cut.

But the same faculty member said Minow in many ways resembles Kagan when she ascended to the Deanship—exhibiting a disregard for political ideology, an interest in others’ work, and a deep concern for the Law School.

Minow inherits a different set of circumstances, however, than Kagan, who led the school during a time of soaring endowment growth that allowed her to focus on the issues that have won her wide acclaim—bridging divides among a polarized faculty, reinvigorating student life, and poaching big-name academics for the school’s faculty.

—Staff writer Elias J. Groll can be reached at egroll@fas.harvard.edu.