Douglas Elmendorf, Former CBO Director, To Lead Kennedy School

UPDATED: June 14, 2015, at 11:17 a.m.

Douglas W. Elmendorf, an economist and the former director of the U.S. Congressional Budget Office, will lead the Kennedy School of Government as its next dean, the school announced on Thursday.

Elmendorf, who is not currently a faculty member at Harvard but was an assistant economics professor in the early 1990s, will succeed longtime Kennedy School Dean David T. Ellwood ’75, who is stepping down at the end of this month. Archon Fung, the Kennedy School’s academic dean, will serve as acting dean until Elmendorf assumes his post next January.

As dean, Elmendorf will oversee the school’s ongoing $500 million capital campaign and a dramatic remodeling of its campus, which started in May. Administrators expect to complete the project by the fall of 2017.

In an interview, Elmendorf highlighted the school’s existing priorities—financial aid, “active” rather than “passive” teaching, and research on national security, improvements to the democratic process, and increased prosperity—as “very appropriate” ones that he intends to preserve.

“Of course, there’s a lot about the school that I don’t know yet, and I will spend a lot of time in the coming months listening to people at the school, to the students, to the staff, to the faculty, and learning from them—and I think over time we may develop new directions for the school to go in,” Elmendorf added.

When Elmendorf assumes his post, one of his first tasks will be to jump into fundraising in the midst of the University’s record-seeking capital campaign. Ellwood said earlier this spring that he expected Kennedy School fundraising to “inevitably slow down” following his departure. Noting that a “vast majority” of the Kennedy School’s money comes from sources other than its alumni, he said long-term relationships with donors could be interrupted or stalled by the transition.

Elmendorf, for his part, argued that it is “crucially important for the Kennedy School to attract additional resources if we are to reach our full potential.”

“There are still three years to go on the campaign, and we intend to make the case to the school’s generous supporters that they’re giving us more to work with and let us do more good in the world," Elmendorf said.

Elmendorf said his understanding of the importance of combining the “right ideas and the right people,” a lesson he learned during his time in Washington, would transfer well to the Kennedy School, an institution he characterized as providing innovative policy solutions and the graduates to implement them.

“People without good policy ideas will have problems making good policy—but also without outstanding people strong policy ideas will falter,” Elmendorf said.

Economics professor and Kennedy School faculty member James H. Stock praised the appointment, highlighting Elmendorf’s attention to detail and nonpartisanship during his tenure at the CBO, which he led from 2009 until earlier this year.

“I expect him to be able to bring his management skills and understanding of economics and his understanding of public policy to his leadership role at the Kennedy School,” Stock said.

Kennedy School Executive Dean John A. Haigh, who said in an interview in March that his ideal dean would be “a leading academic who has been in government and understands the importance and value of management and at the same time can effectively deal with practitioners,” said he was also pleased by the announcement.

“It’s interesting, because I didn’t know if that person existed—but Doug comes as close to that as I could imagine,” Haigh said. “He’s got an exceptional record across many dimensions of his life that are important to us as a school: He’s got a phenomenal record of public service, he is rigorous in his work in a way that is appreciated in academia, [and] he has shown institutional leadership in management.”

Elmendorf received his master’s degree and doctorate in economics from Harvard in 1985 and 1989, respectively, and has also served as an economist for the Federal Reserve Board and the Council of Economic Advisers.