King Comes to Harvard
Larry Summers and the Harvard Corporation have chosen a replacement for Conrad Harper, who resigned in protest of Summers: She is
Patricia A. King, Georgetown University Carmack Waterhouse professor of Law, Medicine, Ethics and Public Policy.
Some notable facts about Ms. King...
1) She is a graduate of the Harvard Law School, but
according to the Crimson, has never maintained particularly strong ties to the university, and so is something of an unusual choice. Larry Summers might have liked that quality about her; he tends not to like Harvard College grads with a strong sense of Harvard tradition, as they often resist the changes he is trying to make.
2) She is also an unusual choice in that she is both black and female. But then, since Conrad Harper was the only minority on the Corporation, Summers really had no choice but to choose a member of a minority group.
3) She is a specialist in bioethics, with expertise in the human genome—something which would have made her an attractive candidate for Larry Summers. King has served on
endless panels and
committees discussing ethical issues in medicine and research. In fact, she may have come to Summers' attention through
Dan Wikler, a professor of ethics and population health at the Harvard School of Public Health, with whom she served on the panel linked to in the word "committees." In 2002, both Summers and Wikler were elected members of the National Academy of Sciences.
(Of course, since she has been in Washington for decades, and Summers spent the '90s in Washington, their paths may have crossed then.)
4) She's media-friendly, making frequent appearances on the PBS News Hour, such as
this one to discuss the guilty verdict in the O.J. Simpson civil trial.
My thoughts? This is one of those moves that reminds you that Larry Summers can be an extremely smart man. He's found a candidate who'll please African-Americans and women concerned about the diversity of the Harvard Corporation. He's also found a woman in science, which helps redress his women-are-dumber-than-men gaffe last spring. Make no mistake: This is not a Corporation choice, this is a Summers pick.
But most importantly, he's found someone who has longstanding experience in the ethical issues stemming (as it were) from biomedicine. Summers is attracted to interesting minds, and I can imagine that he sees in King someone with whom he can have long conversations about the implications of the biomedical research he is promoting at Harvard.
And ultimately, this is the real significance of King's choice: she represents Harvard's new direction
intellectually. The rest—her gender, her ethnicity—is a red herring.
