A lifelong Harvard perspective
After 18 years of service on Harvard’s two governing boards, including the past four as senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation, Robert Reischauer will step down on June 30, ending an official relationship with Harvard that began — unofficially — as a kid running around campus getting into trouble. Reischauer, son of the late Harvard Professor and U.S. Ambassador to Japan Edwin Reischauer, grew up in faculty housing near the Harvard Herbaria. He matriculated in Harvard College already well-versed in knowledge unknown to most classmates: the layout of Harvard’s subterranean steam tunnels, information that he delighted in sharing. Reischauer received a bachelor’s degree in 1963 before heading to Columbia University for graduate studies. Over his long career as one of the nation’s leading experts on the federal budget, Reischauer worked at The Brookings Institution, the Congressional Budget Office, which he directed from 1989 to 1995, and the Urban Institute, of which he...