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Republican consultant Beth Myers and diplomat Ned C. Price will lead the Institute of Politics in an interim capacity while the Harvard Kennedy School conducts a nationwide search for the next permanent director, HKS Dean Jeremy M. Weinstein announced Tuesday morning.
Myers and Price, the first IOP co-directors in recent memory, will partner with current executive director Kimberly Peeples to fill the shoes of IOP Director Setti Warren, who led the organization from 2023 until his sudden death last month.
The unusual decision to appoint two directors will unite Washington insiders who made their careers on opposite sides of the political aisle at a moment when the IOP has tried to burnish its reputation as a haven for bipartisanship — and offer an olive branch to conservatives. The interim pairing was chosen to send a message of bipartisanship and ideological inclusivity, according to a person familiar with the decision-making process.
Myers has worked for various state and national Republicans and is best known as a longtime advisor to Mitt Romney. She served first as chief of staff in his Massachusetts governor’s office and later as campaign manager for his unsuccessful 2008 presidential bid.
She is also a familiar face at the IOP, where she was a resident fellow in 2013, led the IOP’s Campaigns and Advocacy Workshop in 2016, and later returned to the IOP in 2019 as interim director of the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum.
Price, a current IOP fellow and an HKS alumnus, was the first gay person to be a U.S. Department of State spokesperson and occupied foreign policy and communications roles in both the Biden and Obama administrations. He most recently served as a deputy to the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. under President Joe Biden.
In his announcement, Weinstein said Price and Myers would build on Warren’s legacy. Warren’s tenure was defined in part by a concerted effort to introduce more opportunities for conservative students at the IOP.
“As people who know and love the IOP, they will offer superb leadership to this important institution during a critical moment for our country — and carry on Setti’s legacy of helping students from across the political spectrum become great public leaders,” Weinstein said in the announcement.
Former Philadelphia Mayor Michael A. Nutter, who now serves as chair of the IOP’s Senior Advisory Committee, said in the announcement that Price and Myers’ partnership would show students how to agree upon a “shared agenda for the benefit of the IOP and our country.”
Myers, a member of the Republican old guard, built a reputation as detail-oriented, press shy, and closely aligned with Romney — so much so that headlines dubbed her his “work wife” and “office spouse.” But the campaign was frequently factional and divided, a dynamic that Myers was unable to contain.
In 2012, Romney tapped Myers to lead the search for his vice presidential candidate. She landed on Paul Ryan, the Tea Party firebrand.
Even before his presidential campaigns, Myers was protective of Romney and his political prospects. While serving as chief of staff during his term as Massachusetts governor, she reportedly nuked a greenhouse gas reduction agreement between Romney and his fellow Northeastern governors, fearing it would harm Romney’s national appeal.
Price made a name for himself when he abruptly ended his 11-year CIA career in 2017 to protest Donald Trump’s presidency. In a forceful Washington Post op-ed explaining his resignation, Price called out Trump for his hostility toward intelligence agencies and his reorganization of the National Security Council.
“To be clear, my decision had nothing to do with politics. I would have been proud to again work under a Republican administration open to intelligence analysis,” he wrote at the time. “But this administration has flipped that dynamic on its head: The politicians are the ones tuning out the intelligence professionals.”
Shortly after his departure, Price co-founded National Security Action, an anti-Trump foreign policy think tank, with Jake Sullivan, who would go on to serve as Biden’s national security adviser. Price returned to the State Department under Biden, where he defended the president’s stances toward the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.
Both clarified that their positions were transitory. Myers said in Tuesday’s press release that she was “excited to be back” at the IOP and focused on leading students through a “transition time to ensure a great spring semester.”
And Price said he would steer the IOP through a “time of somber transition” and “prepare the Institute for its next chapter.”
“Principled public leadership has never mattered more, and I look forward to partnering with the Harvard community to build on the IOP’s storied legacy,” he said.
The last search for an IOP director lasted eight months and concluded with Warren’s promotion from interim to permanent director.
—Staff writer Elise A. Spenner can be reached at elise.spenner@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X at @EliseSpenner.
—Staff writer Tanya J. Vidhun can be reached at tanya.vidhun@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @tanyavidhun.
