HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

Frances D. Fergusson

Frances D. Fergusson '66, Ph.D. '73, president emerita and professor of art at Vassar College, has been elected president of Harvard's Board of Overseers for 2007-08. William F. Lee '72, co-managing partner of the law firm WilmerHale, will become vice chair of the board's executive committee.

Both Fergusson and Lee are entering the final year of their six-year Overseer terms, and both served on the 2006-07 presidential search committee. They will assume their new roles following Commencement, succeeding Susan L. Graham '64 and Paul Buttenwieser '60, M.D. '64.

"Fran Fergusson and Bill Lee are extraordinarily devoted alumni whose wisdom and experience have already made great contributions to the work of the Overseers and the University," said Derek Bok, interim president of the University. "Harvard in general, and President-elect Faust in particular, will be fortunate to benefit from their leadership next year."

As an Overseer, Fergusson has chaired the board's Standing Committee on Institutional Policy and served on the board's executive committee since 2005. An active participant in the visitation process directed by the Board of Overseers, she is chair of the Committee to Visit the University Library and also serves on the visiting committees to the College and the Design School. In addition, she is a member of the board's Standing Committee on Humanities and Arts and of the governing boards' Joint Committee on Appointments.

William F. Lee

A 1965 graduate of Wellesley College, Fergusson earned her master's and doctoral degrees in architectural history at Harvard. In June 2006 she concluded her distinguished tenure as president of Vassar College, having led Vassar for 20 years. Her presidency was marked by a dramatic increase in applications, a transformation of the college campus (including new spaces for art, drama, and the sciences), a strengthening of Vassar's interdisciplinary curriculum, and a record-setting fundraising campaign.

Before becoming president of Vassar, Fergusson was provost, vice president for academic affairs, and professor of art at Bucknell University from 1982 to 1986. Earlier she was on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts, Boston, where she served terms as director of both the Urban Studies Program and the American Civilization Program, and was assistant chancellor from 1980 to 1982. A recipient of the Founder's Award of the Society of Architectural Historians, she has published widely in architectural history, with particular attention to the reuse of historical styles by later generations of architects and the meaning given to those revivals.

A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Fergusson received the Centennial Medal of Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1999 and Wellesley College's Alumnae Achievement Award in 2001. In 1998, she received the Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Medal, and Vanity Fair magazine named her one of "America's 200 Most Influential Women." She also holds honorary degrees from Bard College, the University of Hartford, and the University of London.

Fergusson is a member of the board of directors of the Foreign Policy Association and a trustee of the Isamu Noguchi Foundation. She previously served as a trustee of the Ford Foundation (1989-2001) and the Mayo Clinic (1988-2002) and chaired the Mayo board during the final four years of her service.

An eminent intellectual property lawyer and co-managing partner of one of the nation's leading law firms, Lee has served on the Overseers executive committee since 2005, while chairing the board's Committee on Finance, Administration and Management. In addition, he has been a member of the Standing Committee on Natural and Applied Sciences, and he serves on the governing boards' Joint Committee on Inspection, the University's audit committee. He is also a member of the Committee to Visit the Law School.

Lee graduated from Harvard College in 1972, and in 1976 received his J.D. and M.B.A. degrees from Cornell. He then began his career at the Boston law firm of Hale and Dorr, where he rose to become chair of the litigation department and then managing partner of the firm from 2000 to 2004. Since Hale and Dorr's 2004 merger with the Washington, D.C.-based firm Wilmer, Cutler and Pickering, Lee has served as co-managing partner of the firm, now known as WilmerHale.

He maintains an extensive trial practice, with an emphasis on intellectual property disputes. His numerous trials in federal court have focused on such diverse matters as laser optics, video conferencing, remote data storage, secure Internet communicator, dye chemistry, high-speed chromatography, and medical devices. Before becoming an Overseer, he served as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, where he taught intellectual property litigation, which has also been the focus of his numerous publications.

A Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, he was named one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America by the National Law Journal in 2000 and again in 2006, and he has been selected by his peers for inclusion in every issue of The Best Lawyers in America since 1995-96. From 1987 to 1989, he took leave from Hale and Dorr to serve as associate counsel to Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh in the Iran-Contra investigation. He also has served as a special assistant to the Massachusetts attorney general for the purpose of investigating alleged incidents of racial bias in the commonwealth's courts.

A resident of Wellesley, he has previously served as vice chairman of the board of the Boston University Medical Center University Hospital, as a trustee of the Boston Medical Center, as an overseer of the Museum of Science, and as chairman of the board of trustees of the Tenacre Country Day School. He also serves on the visiting committee to Cornell Law School.

The Board of Overseers of Harvard College was created by the General Court of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay in 1642, six years after the founding of what is now Harvard University. The board is the larger of Harvard's two governing boards, the other being the President and Fellows of Harvard College (also known as the Harvard Corporation). Members of the Board of Overseers are elected annually by holders of Harvard degrees. Typically, five Overseers are elected each year to six-year terms of service.