Robert D. Reischauer ’63 was named the newest member of the University’s highest governing board yesterday afternoon.

Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute in Washington and former director of the Congressional Budget Office, fills the Harvard Corporation seat left vacant six months ago when Herbert S. “Pug” Winokur ’64-’65 resigned as his membership on Enron’s board of directors came under scrutiny.

In June, Reischauer concluded his six-year term on Harvard’s Board of Overseers, where he served as vice chair of its Executive Committee.

“He is an outstanding man. He has Harvard in him right down to his socks,” said Corporation Senior Fellow James R. Houghton ’58, who chaired the committee to select Winokur’s successor.

Reischauer said that his career as a Washington economist brought him into frequent contact with University President Lawrence H. Summers over the past 20 years.

“He’s someone who elevates and sharpens any conversation he’s part of, and whose sound judgement, inquisitiveness and sense of fairness benefit any institution he serves,” Summers said in a statement.

As a member of the Corporation, Reischauer joins the six-person body that oversees and advises Harvard’s president. Summers also serves on the Corporation.

The group’s proceedings are kept secret and it selects its own members, subject to approval by the Board of Overseers.

Several current Corporation members first approached Reischauer and asked him to join the group this summer, Reischauer said.

“I have some pretty deep roots in the Harvard community,” he said. “I saw this as an opportunity to contribute something to the future of Harvard.”

The Board of Overseers unanimously approved the selection at their first meeting of the academic year in Loeb House yesterday afternoon.

Matthew R. Skomarovsky ’04, a member of the watchdog group HarvardWatch, criticized the selection process as undemocratic.

“The important question is whether the new selection will do anything to change the culture of secrecy and power in the Corporation,” he said. “And given that Reischauer spent the last five years rubber-stamping Corporation policy as a member of the Board of Overseers, I doubt that his addition would lead to any changes in the way the Corporation operates.”

Reischauer said his experiences as a Harvard student, a member of the Board of Overseers and the son of the late Edwin O. Reischauer—a renowned scholar of Japan and a former Harvard professor—give him a variety of perspectives to bring to the post.

His years growing up in a house on Divinity Avenue, he said, help him to understand the perspective of Cambridge residents.

Though he said it was too early to comment on his goals as the newest member of the Corporation, Reischauer said improving “the student experience” would be a top priority.

Reischauer said he hopes to help Harvard improve its leadership role in teaching and scholarship.

“It can do that first and foremost by making sure the ship is sound and that it is well-run,” he said, “and that it maintains the quality of its faculty and attracts the best students, and continues to be a community that not only looks inward but also realizes that it has a role to play in the global community.”

When he was a student at Harvard, Reischauer said, he never expected he would join the ranks of the University’s most powerful leaders.

“I must say my father would be just doubled over in laughter,” he said. “When I graduated I think I had hair down around my shoulders and remember walking in the parade and watching the representatives of the Overseers and the Corporation in their funny outfits and just thinking, ‘Good Lord, what would ever lead anyone to dress up like that?’”

—Staff writer Catherine E. Shoichet can be reached at shoichet@fas.harvard.edu.