Business leaders take roles at Harvard
Frazier, Bae will join powerful oversight board, school says
Two business titans are joining the Harvard Corporation, the university’s top governing board, which has faced scathing criticism in recent months during the worst turbulence at the school in decades.
The board tapped Kenneth Frazier, a former chief executive of pharmaceutical giant Merck, and Joseph Bae, coCEO of KKR, one of the world’s biggest investment firms, bringing in two leaders with management experience at the highest levels of American business.
“Our work is sure to benefit from their leadership qualities, their wideranging expertise and experience, and their devotion to higher education and Harvard,” said Penny Pritzker, the board’s senior member, and interim Harvard president Alan Garber, who is also a member of the board, in a statement.
The board holds primary responsibility for selecting Harvard’s next president, following former president Claudine Gay’s Jan. 2 resignation.
Harvard described Frazier, who is also a lawyer and a Harvard Law School graduate, as a “noted advocate for economic inclusion and opportunity.” The son of a janitor who rose to the pinnacle of corporate America, Frazier, who is Black, recently co-founded a nonprofit, OneTen, that aims to boost the career opportunities of Black Americans, especially those without a four-year college degree, according to Harvard’s announcement and the organization’s website.
Bae, a Harvard College graduate, has worked at KKR for nearly 30 years and became co-CEO in 2021. He has overseen the firm’s private equity and real estate businesses, according to Harvard’s announcement. He has served on numerous boards, including for the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Bae, who is Korean American, is also a co-founder of the Asian American Foundation, a charity that helps people of Asian American and Pacific
Islander descent, according to the group’s website.
Frazier’s six-year term on the Harvard Corporation will begin Wednesday; he is filling a seat that has been vacant since lawyer and businessman David Rubenstein’s term ended last year. Bae’s term is scheduled to begin on July 1. He will replace Paul Finnegan, the chairperson of a Chicago investment firm, who will have served two sixyear terms, the maximum allowed by Harvard’s rules.
Among the board’s most pressing tasks is the presidential search. Gay, the university’s first Black president, stepped down after just six months in the role. Her departure came amid accusations of plagiarism in her academic work and criticism over how she responded to, and talked about, reports of resurgent campus antisemitism since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel sparked the Israel-Hamas war.
Alan Garber, a longtime top Harvard administrator, became interim president when Gay resigned.
The Harvard Corporation is the university’s ultimate authority that “exercises fiduciary responsibility with regard to the university’s academic, financial, and physical resources and overall well-being,” according to Harvard. It also has oversight of the school’s president.
Gay said she would step down during a late December call with Pritzker, the Harvard Corporation’s senior member and a former commerce secretary, the Globe has reported.
The board, also known as the President and Fellows of Harvard College, has 13 seats, one of which is occupied by Harvard’s president. Frazier and Bae were officially elected Sunday by current members and approved by Harvard’s Board of Overseers, the less powerful of the school’s two governing boards.
The board has faced an array of criticism in recent months from alumni, faculty members, and even lawmakers. Among the complaints are that the school’s response to antisemitism was weak, that the board’s handling of the plagiarism allegations against Gay was opaque, and that Harvard’s manner of pursuing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives has gone astray.
One of the school’s and board’s most prominent antagonists in recent months, hedge fund billionaire and Harvard graduate Bill Ackman, personally took aim at Bae last month in a social media post.
Ackman’s wife, former MIT professor Neri Oxman, had been accused of plagiarism by a news outlet, Business Insider. KKR, the firm that Bae co-leads, is a large shareholder of Business Insider’s parent company.
“Joe Bae could also stop this madness because he is the coCEO of KKR and his inaction here is about to cause enormous reputational damage to KKR,” Ackman wrote.
In Washington, Harvard has faced intense criticism from some members of Congress, including Virginia Foxx, the chairperson of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which is pursuing two congressional inquiries into
Harvard.
One is looking into Harvard’s response to campus antisemitism. The other focuses on how the Harvard Corporation handled the plagiarism allegations against Gay.
Pritzker faced calls for her resignation over the board’s handling of the plagiarism accusations, with critics saying the board operates in the shadows. Professors said the board’s review of Gay’s scholarly work should have been more transparent.
At least seven Harvard graduates unhappy with the school’s direction recently mounted outsider bids to join the Board of Overseers, which consists of alumni elected by alumni. Four of them were backed by Ackman. Another was supported by Meta chief executive and onetime Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg. They all failed to collect enough signatures to run in the election to be held this spring.