Kennedy School Dean To Step Down

Kennedy School of Government (KSG) Dean Joseph S. Nye, who led the school through an unprecedented period of growth and internationalization, announced yesterday that he will step down at the end of the academic year.

Nye, who received several standing ovations at the faculty meeting where he announced his decision, said that he was ready to return to teaching after eight years at the school’s helm.

“I became an academic because I like teaching and research, and I’ve been doing administrative jobs now for more than a decade,” Nye said.

It is an opportune time for Nye to step down. His decision comes a month after the school announced that it had reversed the massive $5.9 million deficit it ran in 2002.

“Whoever succeeds Joe will inherit a school that is focused, intellectually vital, strongly engaged with the world and in healthy financial condition,” University President Lawrence H. Summers said after the faculty meeting, where he and others toasted Nye over champagne.

Colleagues described a tenure in which the school’s national and international presence increased dramatically through a larger and more intellectually distinguished faculty.

As the school grew in size, it also increased its research output and its prominence in public affairs.

“He really put the Kennedy School on the map,” said Robert Orr, the recently-appointed executive director for research at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. “I think Joe has made this into an absolute powerhouse.”

Under Nye, the school’s faculty increased by over 40 percent. The number of minority and female professors also increased significantly.

He added five new research centers and a Masters in Public Administration degree in international development.

As part of his focus both on international outreach and shaping public policy, Nye tripled the number of KSG-run executive programs—courses in management and governance the school holds for U.S. and foreign leaders.

“What was striking about Joe was that in many directions, he was an innovator,” said Williams Professor of International Trade and Investment Robert Z. Lawrence. “We had pressing issues by the way our faculty was sort of white and male, and so we became a more diverse faculty and we also became a much larger faculty.”

When Nye came in, Lawrence said, he turned around what had been a “holding pattern” at the school for several years. “It wasn’t a period in which the school really grew or formulated new ideas.”

Nye took over in 1995 as the school’s third dean in four years.

Robert D. Putnam, now Malkin professor of public policy, had stepped down in 1991 after a rocky two years as dean. He was succeeded by Albert Carnesale, who was quickly tapped to be the University’s provost.Putnam said Nye was able to combine high-quality scholarship with relevance to government—two areas that he said have always been the school’s major challenge.

“Joe, in his own work, his own scholarship, in his own life basically, he’s successfully been outstanding in both those dimensions,” Putnam said. “We are clearly...in a more distinguished place intellectually than we were when he took over.”

While dean, Nye himself continued to be an active scholar.

He published The Paradox of American Power last year and earlier this month won an award from the American Political Science Association for the body of his academic work.

“He just made it an enormously energetic place,” Ramsey Professor of Political Economy Richard Zeckhauser said. “He brought large numbers of interesting people here—as faculty, as fellows, as students. He brought intriguing programs. He sort of put electricity into the air.”

Three years ago, Nye created the Visions of Governance Project, annual faculty conferences that have led to the publication of six books.

“Now that’s he been here, we actually have substantive research product to show, as a faculty that’s been working together,” said Lawrence, who contributed a chapter to one of the books.

The increase in faculty, research and centers did not come without cost. For several years the school ran planned deficits to finance its growth, a strategy that backfired after the economy took a turn for the worse in 2001.

The school ran a deficit of $5.9 million in 2002 and eventually had to cut 47 administrative and adjunct faculty positions to return to the black. In 2003, after pledging to cut its deficit in half, the school actually ran a slight surplus.

KSG Executive Dean Bonnie Newman said Nye instituted improved fiscal management procedures, and several professors said the success allowed Nye to step down with his reputation intact.

“Presumably had he decided to step down earlier, his legacy would have been decidedly mixed,” Lawrence said. “By contrast, today, he was very good at making the school grow and he proved to be good at tightening its belt.”

Lawrence said Nye leaves a school that has completed its growth phase and is now “basically positioned in a lot of areas.”

Nye, who quipped that being a member of the faculty was the best job at Harvard “because you have all the irresponsibility,” said he looks forward to returning to research and teaching.

He has taught on the Harvard faculty since 1964, with several hiatuses for government work. Before he returned to Harvard in 1995, he was assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs and chair of the National Intelligence Council.

Summers said he will select a committee to advise him on the search for Nye’s replacement in the next few weeks.

The selection of the new KSG dean will be Summers’ fifth in his just over two years as Harvard’s president.

—Staff writer Elisabeth S. Theodore can be reached at theodore@fas.harvard.edu.