Early Opportunities
Some Harvard professors found their way into the Carter White House even before he was inaugurated in 1977.
KSG Dean Joseph S. Nye Jr. and Weatherhead University Professor Samuel P. Huntington were both given positions in the administration after serving as consultants for Carter’s transition team.
Nye continued working for Carter as deputy to the under secretary of state for security assistance, science and technology.
He also chaired the National Security Council Group on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Huntington, as advisor on national security to president-elect Carter, worked to develop policy initiatives on global human rights, nuclear weapons, and world food shortages.
After the transition, Huntington moved to Washington and became a special consultant to the National Security Council. He is now the director of the Weatherhead Center of International Affairs at Harvard.
Frankfurter Professor of Law Alan M. Dershowitz and Dillon Professor of Government Graham T. Allison ’62 both advised the transition team as well.
Dershowitz says that after he wrote an article on prison sentencing in The New York Times Magazine, the Carter administration called him requesting his thoughts on America’s criminal justice system.
However, after Carter’s inauguration, Dershowitz remained at Harvard Law School. Allison also stayed in Cambridge to become the KSG Dean from 1977 to 1989.
A Harvard Tradition
Since Carter’s democratic administration acquired many of Harvard’s finest minds, other presidents and administrations have sought advice from Cambridge as well.
Richard Darman, public service professor of public management at KSG left Harvard to join the Reagan White House in 1981. There, he served as assistant to the president, and later in 1985 as Deputy Secretary of the Treasury.
He also became President George W. Bush’s director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) from 1989 to 1993.
Bush also appointed John D. Graham, professor of policy and decision sciences at the Harvard School of Public Health as an administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the OMB. Before leaving for Washington, Graham also founded and directed the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis.
—Staff writer Anat Maytal can be reached at maytal@fas.harvard.edu.