As outgoing Dean of the Kennedy School of Government Joseph S. Nye looks on, Black Professor of Political Economy David T. Ellwood ’75 accepts his new position as KSG dean.

David T. Ellwood ’75, the Harvard economist who helped craft the Clinton administration’s anti-poverty strategy, will be the next dean of the Kennedy School of Government (KSG).

Ellwood, who is the Scott M. Black professor of political economy at the KSG, played an influential advisory role in President Clinton’s 1992 campaign and was assistant secretary of health and human services from 1993 to 1995.

Students and faculty packed the school’s John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum yesterday afternoon in anticipation of the announcement, and the crowd cheered when outgoing Dean Joseph S. Nye took the podium.

Nye hailed University President Lawrence H. Summers’ decision to tap Ellwood for the KSG’s top post.

“Fortunately, we have a wise philosopher-king as president,” Nye said.

Nye said Summers has amassed an impressive record of appointing able deans over his two-and-a-half years as president. “Today, he has not only equaled that record, he has surpassed it,” Nye said.

Summers introduced Ellwood as “my longtime friend,” noting that the two had briefly shared an office when both were graduate students in Harvard’s economics department, and they co-authored a paper entitled “Poverty in America: Is Welfare the Answer or the Problem?” in 1985.

Summers called Ellwood “a penetrating scholar and analyst whose work on inequality has had a profound influence...on public policy.”

Ellwood’s students and colleagues praised the dean-designate’s inspirational teaching style, administrative skills and cutting-edge research.

“He’s just a terrific selection: young, energetic and passionate about the Kennedy School and its mission,” said KSG Executive Dean J. Bonnie Newman.

“He’s fabulous,” gushed Cristiana Pasca, a native of Romania who was a student in Ellwood’s introductory microeconomics course last year.

“I had no exposure to economics. I came from a communist country,” said Pasca, “He totally opened my perspective.”

Ellwood, 50, said he would use the next weeks to hear student and faculty perspectives on how to make the school the “flagship of the University.”

“Next fall, I propose to come forward to you with a more concrete set of ideas, and we’ll take it from there,” he said.

K-SCHOOL PIONEER