Despite repeatedly slamming President Obama for consulting with the “Harvard faculty lounge” on foreign policy, more than a third of Mitt Romney’s newly announced foreign policy team have either graduated from or held a position at the university.
Romney himself holds business and law degrees from Harvard and has donated $50,000 to the university. Three of his children are also Harvard MBAs.
Meghan O’Sullivan, co-chair of Romney’s Latin American team, is a current professor of international affairs. Paula Dobriansky, a special adviser to the campaign, is a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Defense adviser Eliot Cohen is a political science PhD and former professor at Harvard.
Veteran State Department official Evan Feigenbaum’s resume alone includes five positions at Harvard: “Executive Director, Asia-Pacific Security Initiative, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2000-2001; Program Chair, Chinese Security Studies Program, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 1999-2001; Lecturer on Government, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, 1998-1999; Belfer Fellow in Science and Technology Policy, Harvard University, 1998-2000; Olin Fellow in National Security, Harvard University, 1997-1998.”
All told, Romney’s foreign policy team, whose members he announced on Thursday, includes 14 Harvard-connected advisers out of 41 total.
Prominent Harvard graduates include Brookings Fellow Robert Kagan (MA), former Iraq coalition spokesman Dan Senor (MBA), and Princeton professor Aaron Friedberg (BA, MA, and PhD), and former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff (BA, JD) among others. Chertoff is also listed as an International Council Member at the Belfer Center. Kerry Healey, who served as Lieutenant Governor under Romney in Massachusetts, earned her BA from Harvard and later returned as a researcher and fellow.
Our rough count doesn’t include other advisers with less direct Harvard ties. Former Ambassador John Danilovich, for example, is listed on the advisory board for the Harvard School of Public Health’s AIDS Initiative. Heritage Foundation Vice President Kim Holmes’s biography notes that he has been published Harvard University’s International Security (presumably with the permission of the Harvard Faculty Lounge).
Here’s our current list.
Graduates
Christopher Burnham
Michael Chertoff
Kerry Healey
Robert Kagan
Dan Senor
James Shinn
Aaron Friedberg
Kent Lucken
Daniel Runde
Kristen Silverberg
Faculty And Other Positions
Paula Dobriansky
Evan Feigenbaum
Meghan O’Sullivan
Eliot Cohen
Benjy Sarlin
Benjy Sarlin is a reporter for Talking Points Memo and co-writes the campaign blog, TPM2012. He previously reported for The Daily Beast/Newsweek as their Washington Correspondent and covered local politics for the New York Sun.
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