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Former Sen. Pat Toomey ’84 (R-Pa.) — a hardline fiscal conservative who became one of only seven Republicans to vote to convict Trump in his 2021 impeachment trial — will serve as a visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics this spring.
He will be joined by eight resident fellows at the IOP, whose names were announced in a Monday press release.
The resident fellows include four former members of the Biden administration: Mari Carmen Aponte, former United States ambassador to Panama and El Salvador; Miguel Cardona, former U.S. Secretary of Education; Edward C. “Ned” Price, former deputy to the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and an HKS alumnus; and Katherine C. Tai, former United States Trade Representative, who is a Harvard Law School graduate.
Two prominent journalists who cover the Trump administration also headline this semester’s group: Peter E. Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, and his wife Susan B. Glasser ’90, a politics writer for The New Yorker.
They will also be joined by former Indiana Gov. Eric J. Holcomb and Brock Lowrance, a former senior adviser at the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
“This semester’s fellows bring a diverse range of backgrounds and experiences to the IOP, and we’re confident that their insights and expertise will help prepare our students to provide meaningful and thoughtful political leadership in the United States and around the world,” IOP director Setti Warren wrote in the release.
During their eight-week term, resident fellows will mentor a group of students and facilitate discussion in their fields of expertise, from statecraft and international relations to American political parties and polarization.
Toomey, who served three terms in the Senate, was a key force in shaping Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which dramatically reduced taxes for the wealthiest Americans, cut corporate tax rates, and repealed a key component of the Affordable Care Act that required most Americans to buy health insurance or face fines.
He has been a staunch proponent of school privatization and sought to minimize the anticipated effects of climate change. He was a hawkish voice on foreign policy and sponsored a 2017 proposal to criminalize boycotts of Israel.
But Toomey broke with Trump over the president’s actions during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots, and said last election cycle that he would neither vote for Trump nor the Democratic candidate, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, in November.
Toomey wrote in a press release that he is honored to return to Harvard as an IOP fellow.
“This is an exciting opportunity to engage with students — our future leaders — about topics most important to them,” he wrote.
“Whether the discussion is about politics, the economy, government, leadership, or world affairs, I hope to offer constructive insights from my experience in government, especially the Senate,” he added.
Glasser, a former managing editor of The Crimson, is a foreign correspondent turned Washington writer who led four publications and founded Politico Magazine. Baker, who has now covered six U.S. presidencies from Bill Clinton to Trump’s second term, wrote in a press release that he believes the fellowship will be “a terrific chance to escape the daily maelstrom and explore important trends and issues more deeply.”
As Indiana governor, Holcomb carved out his stance as a moderate holdout in the state’s government, vetoing a 2022 bill that would have prohibited transgender girls and women from participating in girls’ and women’s sports. (The state legislature overrode his veto.) But later in his term, Holcomb signed a near-total abortion ban into law and restricted gender-affirming care for transgender children.
Tai, as trade representative, helmed the Biden administration’s shift away from prior decades’ embrace of free trade. She described her own stances as “worker-centered trade policy,” prioritized relationships with labor leaders, and praised the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement, a pact negotiated by the first Trump administration that replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Price was appointed to his position as a deputy to the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in 2024, as the Biden administration faced pressure over Israel’s war in Gaza. Earlier in Biden’s term, Price was the first openly gay person to serve as spokesperson for the U.S. State Department. In his role, he cast doubt on the International Criminal Court’s investigation into possible Israeli war crimes during the 2014 war in Gaza and defended limits on the export of Covid-19 vaccines to India as the country faced skyrocketing deaths in early 2021.
Before serving under Biden, Price resigned from his position at the CIA in 2017 over Trump’s appointment of his own loyalists to the National Security Council.
Cardona, who spearheaded Biden’s education policy, rolled out large-scale student loan forgiveness programs. His Education Department launched an investigation into Harvard’s legacy admissions practices, which Cardona has sharply criticized — though he has also been a frequent speaker at Harvard events.
Aponte practiced law for more than 25 years before her ambassadorships, becoming the first woman to lead the Hispanic National Bar Association, and has sat on three college and university boards. She served as acting assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs in 2016 and 2017.
Will M. Smialek ’27 and Zoe Yu ’27, co-chairs of the IOP Fellows and Study Groups Program, welcomed the new cohort of fellows in the press release — and nodded to some of the IOP’s own internal politics.
After tensions briefly flared up among IOP members over an invite-only Biden visit in April, Smialek and Yu faced criticism from students who were unable to attend and promised to defend inclusivity in access to programming.
On Monday, Smialek and Yu, a Crimson Editorial editor, wrote that they remained focused on “expanding opportunities for undergraduates, making our programming more expansive, and ensuring that our program belongs to the entire Harvard community.”
—Staff writer Tanya J. Vidhun can be reached at tanya.vidhun@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @tanyavidhun.
