By Ken Gewertz

Gazette Staff

David Johnston '63 has been elected president of the Board of Overseers for 1997-98. Johnston was elected by the Board on April 6, and he will assume the post, currently held by Renée M. Landers '77, Deputy General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, after Commencement.

Elected to the Board of Overseers in 1992, Johnston is currently a professor of law at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, having served as principal and vice-chancellor of McGill from 1979 to 1994.

"David Johnston is a skillful and experienced academic leader with an unusually broad understanding of the challenges facing Harvard and higher education," said President Neil L. Rudenstine. "For the past five years he has contributed greatly to the work of the Overseers and the University as a whole, especially on such matters as the visitation process, humanities and the arts, and information technology. He is a wise counselor and a natural leader with a deep devotion to Harvard. It's a pleasure to welcome him as the next president of the Board, and I'm sure he will build energetically on the strong leadership of his predecessor, Renée Landers, who has served Harvard so vigorously and so well."

Johnston said that he is "proud and flattered" to serve his alma mater.

"Harvard first contacted me about a scholarship when I was 14

years old on the advice of an alumnus who had heard I was a promising scholar-athlete. At the time, I was completely

surprised, but not once I came to know the University," Johnston said. "Harvard has a remarkable outreach program to recruit both students and faculty. They work harder at it than any institution I know."

In return for the support Harvard offered him early in his career, Johnston said he has been "trying to put water back in that well ever since."

A native of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Johnston received the A.B. from Harvard in 1963 and the LL.B. from Cambridge University, England, in 1965. He also received an LL.B. degree from Queens University, Canada, in 1966. While at Harvard he was named to the All-American hockey team in 1962 and 1963. He is a member of the Harvard Athletic Hall of Fame.

He was an associate professor and a professor of law at the University of Toronto between 1968 and 1974. He then served as a professor and dean of the law faculty at the University of Western Ontario from 1974-79. In 1979, he came to McGill University, where he served as principal and vice-chancellor from 1979 to 1994. In 1994 he returned to teaching in the faculty of law.

He is a founding chairman of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy; former president of the Association of Canadian Universities; a member of the International Association of Universities; chairman of the Advisory Council on the Information Highway to the Government of Canada; an Officer of the Order of Canada; chairman of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research; and chairman of the Neuroscience Centre of Excellence.

Johnston is the author or co-author of seven books, including: Computers and Law (1968) Canadian Securities Regulation (1977); Business Associations (1983, 3rd ed., 1994); Canadian Companies and the Stock Exchanges (1979); If Quebec Goes . . . The Real Cost of Separation (1995); Getting Canada On-Line: Understanding the Information Highway (1995); and Cyberlaw and Electronic Commerce (1997).

Johnston's contributions to the Board of Overseers as a committee member have been numerous and varied. He has served on several of the Board's standing committees, including the Executive Committee, Alumni Affairs and Development, Finance, Administration and Management, and Humanities and Arts, which he has chaired from 1995 to the present. He also serves on the Visiting Committee to the Harvard Business School.

Johnston's other Harvard activities include service on the Committee on University Resources, the Committee on Information Technology, the Athletics Visiting Committee, and the Committee to Review the Visitation Process.