Gutmann, a distinguished political philosopher, has strong Harvard connections. She holds both a bachelor's degree and a doctorate from Harvard, and was a visiting professor at the Kennedy School of Government from 1988-1989. Her daughter, Abigail Gutmann Doyle '02, is a junior in Kirkland House.

In 1995, Princeton President Harold T. Shapiro tapped Gutmann to serve as Princeton's dean of the faculty. She was well regarded as a dean, but left after only two years, saying that she wanted to return to teaching and research.

"What I did not foresee is how much I would miss scholarship and teaching," she said in a 1997 statement. "I now know more vividly than before what it means to have a calling and what happens when one turns aside from it."

But Gutmann's associates say that she is now ready to embrace an all-consuming administrative post.

"I would infer from the length of her deanship nothing about her tenure as possible president of Harvard," said George Kateb,, a professor of politics at Princeton who is close to Gutmann.

Kateb said Gutmann has settled many of the issues that occupied her scholarship and is ready to return to an administrative post.

"She is now in her early 50s, has recently published two books, and is closing in on the substantial contents of another book," he said.