Leila Fawaz, a Tufts University professor and Middle East scholar, will lead Harvard’s Board of Overseers, one of Harvard’s highest governing bodies, for the 2011-2012 academic year, the University announced last week.

Robert N. Shapiro ’72, a partner at the law firm Ropes & Gray and a former president of the Harvard Alumni Association and the Harvard Law School Association, will serve as the Board of Overseers’ vice-chair.

“We’re greatly fortunate to have such an outstanding pair of Overseers to lead the board forward next year,” University President Drew G. Faust said in a press release. “Leila Fawaz and Rob Shapiro have brought extraordinary dedication and insight to their service as Overseers these past five years, and it will be a privilege to benefit from their leadership and guidance in 2011-12.”

Fawaz and Shapiro will assume their positions following Commencement this May. They will succeed former solicitor general Seth P. Waxman ’73 and Massachusetts Technology Collaborative Executive Director Mitchell L. Adams ’66.

“Certainly, together with my fellow Overseers, I hope to support President Faust and her colleagues in their vigorous efforts to adapt to changing times and to maintain Harvard’s standing as the best university in the world,” Fawaz wrote in an e-mail.

Fawaz was the founding director of the Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies at Tufts University, and also serves as a professor of history at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Fawaz, who was raised in Lebanon, studied at the American University of Beirut before pursuing graduate degrees in history at Harvard—in 1972 she received an A.M. and in 1979 she received a Ph.D.

She has been a member of the Board of Overseers since 2006 and has served on the executive committee since 2009. She is the head of the board’s social sciences committee and serves on a number of other committees.

“I expect that we will also be thinking about such issues as Harvard’s evolving international agenda, its efforts to think innovatively about teaching and learning in the college and across the schools, and the ways the different parts of the University can work together both academically and administratively,” Fawaz wrote.

Shapiro graduated from the College in 1972 and concentrated in philosophy. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, and received a J.D. from the Law School in 1978.

Shapiro currently chairs the Overseers’ standing committee on institutional policy.

Shapiro was on the Harvard Corporation’s governance review committee last year, which resulted in a historic governance overhaul that dramatically expanded the size of the Corporation.

Next year will be the final year of both Fawaz and Shapiro’s six-year Overseer term.

—Staff writer Zoe A. Y. Weinberg can be reached at zoe.weinberg@college.harvard.edu.