Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology Theda Skocpol—one of the most vocal critics of University President Lawrence H. Summers’ leadership earlier this semester—will be the next dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Science (GSAS), Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby announced on Friday.

Skocpol will replace outgoing dean Peter T. Ellison, who has been at the helm of GSAS for the past five years, when he steps down on July 1. Skocpol will become the second woman to lead the graduate school.

She said she was offered the position at a lunch meeting with Kirby last Tuesday.

Only the dean of the Faculty has power to appoint the GSAS dean, although he first vets potential candidates with faculty members—and especially with the Faculty Council, the 18-member governing body of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS).

Sociology Department Chair Mary C. Waters, a longtime friend of Skocpol, praised Kirby’s decision to appoint her.

“I see it as a brilliant move by Dean Kirby to have a very, very capable and talented person be in charge of the graduate school,” she said.

Waters said the prospect of having a female dean—particularly in light of faculty disappointment with declining numbers of tenure offers made to women since Summers became president in 2001—might have been part of the motivation for appointing Skocpol.

“There’s been a lot of pressure to begin having some more women deans around here, so I’m sure that was one thing considered,” she said.

“I’m sure [being a woman] didn’t hurt,” Skocpol added.

In any case, Skocpol, herself a GSAS graduate, brings to the job a lot of experience at the school.

She has served as director of graduate studies for the Sociology Department, and she currently chairs GSAS’ Committee on Research Workshops.

According to Waters, the workshops committee, which Skocpol launched in 1994, provides funds for graduate students or faculty members to hold workshops to present their works-in-progress.

“I am delighted that Theda has agreed to lead the Graduate School at a moment of great strength and challenge,” Kirby said in a press release. “She is a national leader in multiple fields of study, a devoted mentor of graduate students, and a dedicated citizen of this faculty.”

The appointment is not without irony, though, as it makes Skocpol, a long-time critic of various administrators, an administrator herself.

Earlier this semester, she was one of the professors who led the first round of attacks against Summers.

On Feb. 15, Skocpol accused Summers of “wrapping [himself] in the mantle of academic freedom” in refusing to release the transcript of his January remarks on women in science. At the meeting, she also said that the University was suffering from a “crisis of governance and leadership.”

And on March 15, Skocpol submitted a docket motion calling for the Faculty to censure Summers for his remarks on women in science and for certain “aspects of the President’s managerial approach.”

Minutes after voting no confidence in Summers, the Faculty passed Skocpol’s motion with 253 for, 137 against, and 18 abstaining.

Skocpol said that although she has been a critic of Summers, she has a good personal relationship with him.

“Personally, my relationship with Larry Summers has always been mutually respectful and a relationship in which there is vigorous discussion and back-and-forth,” she said. “I don’t anticipate any difficulties in working with him.”

A quarter-century earlier, in 1981, Skocpol filed a grievance against the University for gender discrimination when her tenure application was denied. Then-Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky and then-University President Derek C. Bok agreed to review her case, and, after she’d spent four years at the University of Chicago, Harvard offered Skocpol tenure. She accepted the offer and has been at the University ever since.

In 1986, Skocpol described her tenure conflict as “a many-year game of chicken with the leaders of the most arrogant university in the western world.”

Government Department Chair Nancy L. Rosenblum, who has spoken publicly in support of Summers at Faculty meetings, said last month that Kirby “invited an expression of interest” by her in the GSAS deanship. She said she was “undoubtedly” one of several people asked by Kirby if they would be interested in the job. She said she told Kirby she was not interested in the post because she is a relatively new senior faculty member at Harvard—she joined Harvard in 2001—and is also only in her first year as chair of the government department.

Skocpol said that even though she now becomes a top administrator, she will not necessarily become a less vocal faculty member.

“Obviously I’m a dean and I need to address issues with caution from that perspective,” she said. But she added that she is “at least considering the possibility that occasionally [she] will speak in Faculty meetings” as a member of the Faculty.

“That will be a daring departure from past precedent,” she said, “but I am considering it.”

—Staff writer William C. Marra can be reached at wmarra@fas.harvard.edu.