Gund-Morrow Elected Next Harvard Institute of Politics President

Updated November 19, 2024, at 1:34 a.m.

Tenzin R. Gund-Morrow ’26 and Summer A. L. Tan ’26 were elected as the next president and vice president of Harvard’s Institute of Politics, the organization announced early Monday morning.

Gund-Morrow and Tan will helm the IOP alongside newly elected treasurer Kevin Bokoum ’26 and communications director Lorenzo Z. Ruiz ’27, a Crimson Editorial editor.

Gund-Morrow — who will begin his tenure at the IOP on Jan. 1 — said he was “just so grateful and proud to be here with this wonderful, wonderful woman,” referring to Tan, his running mate.

“I fell on my entire back, spread out, and was thinking about the fact that three years ago, if high school me had seen this, I would have felt every single anxiety I had for the last three years was not consequential at all,” he said.

Gund-Morrow and Tan won with nearly 60 percent of the vote, defeating Thomas A. Tait ’26 and Morgan Byers ’26. Gund-Morrow and Tan will succeed Pratyush Mallick ’25 and Ethan C. Kelly ’25, whose last weeks in office were marked by controversy after Mallick penned an op-ed calling for the IOP to drop its commitment to nonpartisanship following Donald Trump’s reelection.

Tan said she felt absolutely “ecstatic” and “honored” to have the opportunity to lead the IOP.

“We both joined this organization our first semester freshman year and it's really become a home to us,” she said. “I have really been able to find a community here.”

Gund-Morrow — who previously rebuked Mallick’s op-ed in a statement to The Crimson — said he and Tan could not “be more emphatic when we say that it is of utmost importance that the IOP remains nonpartisan.”

“We think that the IOP is unique at Harvard, not because of the partisan activities it has, where it brings together like-minded people to come up with great ideas, but most of all, for the times it brings together people that have completely divergent political ideologies,” he said.

Tan said that she hopes to focus the next year on building a “full global affairs program” that will host programming on international issues.

“One thing that I’ve always really wanted to get into is politics abroad, because I think at the IOP, at Harvard, and just in the United States in general, we’re very America-centric,” she said.

Gund-Morrow added that the newly-elected student executive team plans to partner with universities and non-profits abroad to offer more international internship opportunities for IOP members.

Bokoum — who won with just 52 percent of the vote to become the IOP’s next treasurer — said that even in his current role as director of internal affairs, he “got to be a part of negotiating for student scholarships.”

“I met with every single program chair, every single coalition chair in that role too,” he said. “I think it made me really well-prepared for the role.”

Ruiz, who received nearly 65 percent of the vote, said he plans to bolster the IOP’s social media presence and launch a merch store to “get people juiced.”

“We’re going to be focusing on doing reels and post promotional content so that students’ eyeballs are catching what we need them to catch,” he said.

“The IOP in me has a creative and happy mailman, but it also has a very practical and seasoned bulldog,” Ruiz added.

Nearly 950 students were eligible to vote for the election under the terms set by the IOP Election Commision, a body of four IOP affiliates. While the specific number of voters was undisclosed, the organization announced that the election had “the highest turnout of any IOP election.”

This week, the IOP will elect leaders for six of its 16 student programs, including its flagship JFK Jr. Forum Committee, which Gund-Morrow currently leads. Leaders for the remaining eight programs will be selected through an application-based process.

—Staff writer William C. Mao can be reached at william.mao@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @williamcmao.

—Staff writer Dhruv T. Patel can be reached at dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @dhruvtkpatel.