Harvard Names Law Professor Gabriella Blum Interim Dean of the Radcliffe Institute as Tomiko Brown-Nagin Leaves for Stanford

Harvard Law School professor Gabriella Blum will serve as interim dean of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute when Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin leaves at the end of October to lead Stanford's Graduate School of Education, University President Alan M. Garber and Provost John F. Manning announced, The Harvard Crimson reported.

Brown-Nagin led Radcliffe for eight years, expanding its fellowship programs and heading several University-wide projects, according to The Crimson. Her move to Stanford was announced in August.

Blum specializes in the law of armed conflict, international law and counterterrorism. She is vice dean for the Graduate Program and International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School and faculty director of its Program on International Law and Armed Conflict, The Crimson reported. She joined the law faculty as a visiting professor in 2005 and was appointed permanently in 2007.

Before teaching, Blum was an official in the Israel Defense Forces' International Law Department, where she led the counterterrorism desk, and later a strategic adviser to Israel's National Security Council, according to The Crimson. She helped draft legal guidelines governing Israel's use of targeted killings. In a 2018 interview with The Intercept, she said she believed Israel had begun using targeted killings beyond the scope of those guidelines, which she said allowed them only as exceptions when no alternative existed.

Blum served on the faculty advisory committee in the 2022 presidential search that selected Claudine Gay, and Harvard Law faculty floated her in 2024 as a candidate for the law school deanship, which went to John C.P. Goldberg, The Crimson reported.

"Her record of service along with her ability to cut across disciplines, audiences, and perspectives in pursuit of knowledge and progress will be an asset as she stewards Radcliffe's ongoing work in nurturing and advancing the robust exchange of ideas," Garber and Manning wrote.

Garber and Manning named a 10-member faculty advisory committee: Harvard Business School Dean Srikant M. Datar; Graduate School of Education Academic Dean Martin R. West; Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dean Emma Dench; Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Karin Öberg; chemistry professor Emily P. Balskus; University Professor and historian Ann M. Blair; geneticist Susan Dymecki; Harvard Divinity School professor Tracey Hucks; economist Ludwig Straub; and urban planning professor Rachel Weber.

They did not set a timeline. They invited nominations and feedback on the institute's direction. "Please also share with us the names of any individuals within or beyond Harvard who you think merit serious consideration for the role," they wrote.

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, on the site of the former Radcliffe College in Cambridge, hosts an annual class of fellows across disciplines, runs the Schlesinger Library on the history of women in America and holds public programs. Its dean has historically been a prominent faculty figure, and the choice signals the institute's priorities.

The interim appointment is temporary; the permanent dean will be chosen through the faculty search, for which no timeline has been set.