Mary Jo Bane, a former Clinton administration official who has been at the Kennedy School of Government for most of the past 25 years, will replace controversial professor Stephen M. Walt as the school’s Academic Dean, effective July 1.

David T. Ellwood, the dean of the Kennedy School, said he picked Bane, who is the Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy and Management, because in addition to being an “effective manager,” she can combine practicality with academics.

As academic dean, Bane will become “the chief academic officer” overseeing curriculum, quality of teaching, and faculty assignment. Specifically, Bane will join the ongoing effort to sharpen the Kennedy School’s curriculum. Ellwood said he hopes to create more “signature” courses studying, for example, the areas of decision-making.

Ellwood and Bane have known each other for a long time, having served together during the Clinton administration, when Bane was assistant secretary for children and families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“The fact that I’ve worked with Mary Jo in so many different setting both in government and in academia means that I feel very comfortable with her strategy,” Ellwood said.

In addition, Bane will direct the KSG’s Faculty Steering Committee and serve, with Executive Dean John Haigh, as a close adviser to Ellwood. Together, they will address broad questions about the direction in which the school is headed and its strategies for the future.

Walt, the current academic dean and a professor of international relations, stepped down shortly after he published in March a controversial working paper entitled “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.”

But the row caused by that paper, which argues that US foreign policy is excessively pro-Israel, was unrelated to Walt’s resignation, which had been planned before the paper’s release, Ellwood has said.

--Claire M. Guehenno