Salovey: Yale’s next president? 9.03.08
In appointing Yale College Dean Peter Salovey as provost last week, University President Richard Levin selected for himself a new right-hand man. He also may have chosen his own successor. As Salovey prepares to take office next month, his appointment to the University’s number-two position has raised an unavoidable question among those in Yale’s chattering classes: Will the beloved dean be Yale’s 23rd president? Time will only tell, and administrators and longtime observers of the University caution against trying to forecast the future occupant of Woodbridge Hall years before Levin will likely step down (Levin has said the earliest he would step down is at the end of the Yale Tomorrow fundraising campaign in 2011). But they admit the 50-year-old Salovey will almost surely be president someday, be it here or at another school.
