Harvard, upon closer examination, seems to have a quite mediocre governing board. I believe there are a few exceptions on the list of names, but nonetheless I see a lot of evidence for a critical mass of poor decision-makers, many of them also lacking in courage. Furthermore, they are bad at the things they are supposed to be good at.
Just as Harvard has many of the best faculty, and many of the best students, I had expected the school would have a super-distinguished and super-competent board, even if it was a board I might have disagreed with on many key issues. I had never looked at the Harvard board before. So I was naive. But in fact the board of “the Corporation” is a big, big disappointment (WSJ), relative to the rest of the institution. Harvard seems to do best when the relevant decisions are not being made by the governing board. More fundamentally, viewed as a political economy problem, I don’t see which are the institutions or incentives in place to make the board really, really good, as it ought to be. Nope.
Most of our institutions seem to be like this nowadays.