I failed to gather nearly enough Presidential Search gossip and speculation prior to Maud Mandel’s selection last month. Apologies!

1) Andreas Halvorsen ’86 will be the next chair of the board of trustees, succeeding Mike Eisenson ’77. This is not public yet, of course, but there is no way that Williams would not include Eisenson’s successor on the search committee — given that it would choose the next president, who would then work closely with the next chair — and Halvorsen is, by far, the most likely candidate among those on the committee. Indeed, the Eisenson/Halvorsen pairing on this search committee is just like the Avis/Eisenson pairing on the committee that chose Falk. (Greg Avis ’80 was chair of the board at that time.)

2) Tiku Majumder is a good guy and fine professor, but that is not the reason he was chosen as the interim president. (There are, obviously, dozens of good guys/gals among the senior professors at Williams.) Majumder was chosen by Eisenson because they had gotten to know each other so well on the search committee that selected Falk almost a decade ago. Want to know who has the inside track on being the interim president when Mandel leaves? Look for someone that Halvorsen got to know well while working on this committee.

3) The College used fancy search firm Spencer Stuart, with lead consultant Mary Gorman. Why didn’t Eisenson select Isaacson, Miller, the firm used just a decade earlier to find Falk? I don’t know. Was Eisenson unimpressed with the Isaacson, Miller process which foisted Falk on Williams? Did he have prior experience with Spencer Stuart? Did someone else make the decision?

4) I would most like to know some of the details of the process, which Morty was much more open about the last time. How many candidates? How many interviews? And so on. I am especially interested in who the other finalists were, but that may be tough to discover.

5) How long was Maud Mandel been on the presidential job market and how much had Spencer Stuart been shopping her around? Note that the previous Dean of the College at Brown, Katherine Bergeron, went from that role to president at our NESCAC rival Connecticut College.