Landers Elected President of Board of Overseers

Renée M. Landers '77 has been elected president of the Board of Overseers for 1996-97. Landers was elected by the Board on April 14, and she will assume the post, currently held by the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., President Emeritus of the University of Notre Dame, after Commencement.

Elected to the Board of Overseers in 1991, Landers is currently Deputy General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

"Renée Landers joined the Board of Overseers just as I was returning to Harvard, and working with her these past five years has been an absolute pleasure and privilege," said President Neil L. Rudenstine. "She is a remarkably thoughtful, energetic, and insightful colleague, with a deep sense of both the substantive and human dimensions of different issues and problems. She has already made extraordinary contributions to the work of the Overseers and the life of the University, and I am sure that she will be an outstanding leader of the Board."

"It is a great honor to have been elected by my colleagues, who are an exceptionally distinguished and talented group," said Landers. "The commitment of these individuals to Harvard at a time when formidable challenges confront all institutions of higher education is a testament to Harvard's excellence and to the contribution Harvard has made to their lives. I am eager to continue working with my Overseer colleagues to help Neil and the Corporation meet these challenges in a way that ensures that in the next century Harvard remains a place where the very best scholarship can flourish and where faculty, staff, and students are supported in that enterprise."

A native of Springfield, Ill., Landers received the A.B. from Harvard in 1977. Upon graduation she remained in the Boston area and served as Deputy Secretary of State of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts before entering law school at Boston College. She received the J.D. from that school in 1985, after which she clerked for the Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. After a period of law practice in Boston, Landers returned to Boston College as an assistant professor of law. The intellectual focus of her work has been on health care regulation, gender, and racial and ethnic bias in the legal system. Two years ago she was appointed Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Policy Development where she chaired a departmental working group on alternative dispute resolution and the Attorney General's Advisory Committee on Sexual Harassment. She moved to the Department of Health and Human Services earlier this year.

A past president of the Radcliffe College Alumnae Association and a former Radcliffe trustee, Landers has also long been active in the work of the Harvard Alumni Association, having served as a director. An avid singer, she continues to be a supporter of the Radcliffe Choral Society, and has served on its alumnae board of directors.

Landers's contributions to the Board of Overseers as a committee member have been numerous and varied. She has served on the Board's standing committees on Humanities and Arts, Alumni Affairs and Development, and Institutional Policy, having chaired the last since 1994. In addition she is a member of the Executive Committee and the Joint Committee on Appointments, as well as the Committee on University Resources. During the past two years she has chaired the Harvard-Radcliffe Committee to Review the Status and Role of Women Undergraduates, and she is a member of the committees to visit the Law School, the Department of Astronomy, the University Health Services, and the Department of Afro-American Studies.

Landers is married to Thomas L. Barrette Jr. '77, a partner in the Boston law firm of Hale and Dorr. They are the parents of a one-year old son, Nelson Landers Barrette.