Ex-treasury secretary Rubin named to Harvard board

BOSTON, Massachusetts (Reuters) -- Harvard University, hurt recently by prominent defections and a public dispute with its team of black scholars, said on Sunday it had landed former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin as a member of its governing board.

Rubin assumes his role on July 1, replacing Robert Stone Jr. on the Harvard Corporation, which is the prestigious school's executive governing board, Harvard said in a statement.

"Robert Rubin is one of the most accomplished and admired Harvard alumni of his generation," said James R. Houghton, a member of the Harvard Corporation and chair of the search committee.

Credited with helping the United States achieve its longest domestic peacetime expansion in history, Rubin gives Harvard a much-needed public relations boost.

Harvard President Lawrence Summers, who served as Rubin's deputy secretary in the treasury department from 1995 to 1999, has had a rocky first year, marked by well-known professors leaving for other schools, a messy fight over low-wage campus workers and a row with some of Harvard's black scholars.

Last week, for example, international economist Jeffrey Sachs said he would leave Harvard for Columbia University's Earth Institute.

And on Friday, Herbert "Pug" Winokur Jr., a board member at collapsed energy giant Enron Corp., said he would resign from Harvard's governing body after coming under fire from a coalition of students and alumni.

Enron's board of directors has been blasted for its failed oversight of the energy trader.

But with Rubin, Harvard gets a gold-plated Wall Street executive who helped strengthen the dollar and defused financial crises in Mexico and Asia as treasury secretary during the Clinton administration.

After stepping down as Treasury Secretary in 1999, Rubin joined Citigroup, where he serves as chairman of the executive committee.

"Harvard is a great university -- a true global resource -- that plays an enormous role in furthering inquiry, understanding, and debate across the entire spectrum of intellectual pursuits," Rubin said in a statement.

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