At the time, Ellwood, who already had left the administration, publicly criticized the compromise provision, calling it “welfare reform in name only” and urging Clinton to veto the bill.

When Ellwood returned to the KSG at the beginning of the 1995-1996 academic year, then-U.S. Senator Daniel P. Moynihan, D-N.Y., called his departure from the Clinton administration “a tragedy.”

“[Ellwood’s] thinking was seminal, but he’s been undone,” lamented Moynihan, a former Harvard professor who died last year.

“I left [Washington] because it was better for my family,” said Ellwood in a conversation with The Crimson yesterday. But, he added, “it was also clear that the direction things were headed was very different from what I hoped.”

‘SENSITIVE AND CARING’

Ellwood returned to Harvard in 1995 amidst speculation that he would fill the then-vacant KSG dean post.

“Several sources close to Ellwood have speculated that the job is his if he wants it,” The Crimson reported in April 1995.

The speculation turned out to be false.

Ellwood said he doesn’t know if he would have accepted the deanship if the University had offered it to him in 1995.

“This is the right time for me,” he said yesterday. “I can devote myself to the job in a way that would have been very difficult back then.”

Ellwood served on the University’s living wage committee that was formed in 2001 in the deal that ended student protesters’ 21-day Mass. Hall sit-in.

Newman, who was also on the living wage committee, said Ellwood is a “sensitive and caring person, which is very helpful particularly when you’re dealing with people who are feeling disenfranchised.”

“In my conversations with him, I sense he’s a hands-on manager,” Newman said.

CLOSE TO THE VEST

Summers’ appointment of Ellwood culminates a seven-month search to fill the post being vacated by Nye, who said last September he will step down as dean to focus on teaching and research.