Economist Appointed Center's New Director

Mark R. Rosenzweig, an economist at the Kennedy School of Government, has been named the next director of Harvard’s Center for International Development (CID), just three months after University President Lawrence H. Summers said he was considering scrapping the CID altogether.

Summers and Kennedy School Dean David T. Ellwood ’75 appointed Rosenzweig to the post this week. Cabot Professor of Public Policy Kenneth S. Rogoff resigned as CID director at the end of last semester.

The immediate future of the center, which since 1998 has coordinated research on sustainable international development now appears to be secure.

“The University and the Kennedy School are committed to supporting Professor Rosenzweig as he develops new plans for the CID,” said Rebecca Rollins, associate director of the Harvard News Office.

In the spring, faculty and administrators said there was a possibility that the CID would be eliminated as Harvard reorganizes its resources in the field of development studies. Summers emphasized that Harvard would not scale back its research programs in development studies, even if the University dissolved the CID.

Ellwood, who took office as dean this summer, wrote in an e-mail yesterday that he will continue to examine how best to organize development resources at Harvard.

“I am committed to major—even expanded—work in development, but the long run shape of that effort remains a critical topic for Mark and me along with others here at the [Kennedy] School and the University,” Ellwood wrote.

“Finding ways to help people around the world move up the economic ladder will undoubtedly be a central theme of my work as Dean,” Ellwood wrote.

Rosenzweig, the Kamal professor of public policy, is an experienced administrator who previously led the University of Pennsylvania’s economics department for five years. After coming to Harvard in fall 2002, he served on the Faculty Oversight Committee that steered the CID after the center’s first director, economist Jeffrey D. Sachs ’76, left Cambridge to lead Columbia’s Earth Institute.

“Harvard has a unique opportunity to pull together the multiple disciplines needed to address development issues that are faced both within the U.S. and internationally,” Rosenzweig said in a statement Tuesday. “I look forward to enhancing the role of international development in the Kennedy School and the University.”

Ellwood described Rosenzweig as a “world class scholar.”

“He is admired by his colleagues, and he has considerable energy and enthusiasm for the work,” Ellwood wrote of the new CID director.

Rollins highlighted Rosenzweig’s research on economic development in South Asia. Rosenzweig has documented wage discrimination against female workers in India and the Philippines. His recent work has examined the effects of low birth weight on labor productivity and lifetime earnings. He is also co-principal investigator of the New Immigrant Survey, an $18.8 million federally funded effort to provide demographic information on immigrants who enter the U.S. legally.

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