The well-regarded UC-Berkeley economist is the new chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.

And here’s another interesting thing about her: She was supposed to leave Berkeley for Harvard, until Drew Faust mysteriously rescinded Romer’s tenure offer.

As the Times puts it,

There was never any public explanation for Harvard’s decision.

There rarely is. Anyone out there know what happened? Did Drew Faust, Harvard’s first female president, really nix Romer because, as David Warsh argues, Romer had been a member of a visiting committee that criticized Harvard’s economics department for its disinclination to hire women?

Whatever happened privately, publicly Drew Faust and the Harvard economics department look silly on this one. They lost an opportunity to have signed on another economist now snapped up by the president-elect.