A few weeks ago I wrote about the abundance of law degrees and apparent absence of public policy or public administration degrees in the Obama administration. Today, however, Eli Rosenbaum writes in to ay that the situation has changed:
there is now a Cabinet secretary (Secretary of Housing and Urban Development-designate Shaun Donovan MPA '86, also has an M.Arch and A.B. from Harvard), the head of an office within the Executive Office of the President (Director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Nancy Sutley MPP '86), and of course Obama's former Senate chief of staff who will now be one of his three senior advisers, along with David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett (Pete Rouse MPA '77, also has a master's from the LSE).I would also note that several senior members of the Bush administration were HKS alums: the current head of the National Economic Council, being replaced by Larry Summers (Keith Hennessey MPP '94), the former CEO of Fannie Mae, perhaps not the best example but still very senior (Daniel Mudd MPP '86), and the former chief-of-staff (Andrew Card, who did not graduate but was in the MPA class of 1980). I am sure there are more of which I am not aware.
I, for one, welcome our new MPA overlords.
