BusinessWeek

Harvard University, the oldest and richest U.S. college, named intellectual property lawyer William F. Lee to its board of trustees, the body’s first Asian-American member.

Lee, a 1972 graduate of Harvard College who now lectures at Harvard Law School, will replace James Houghton, 74, who will step down July 1, Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Harvard said yesterday in a statement on its Web site. Lee, 60, is co- managing partner of the WilmerHale law firm in Boston.

Harvard’s seven-person board, called the President and Fellows of Harvard College or the Harvard Corporation, reviews and approves the university’s major financial decisions. The corporation last year began a comprehensive evaluation of its procedures, which faculty have criticized for their secrecy, after the university lost almost one-third of its endowment in the global financial crisis.

Lee’s “wisdom and experience, his intellectual curiosity, his feel for people and situations, his deep sense of how institutions can adapt to changing times -- those qualities and more have made him an exceptionally valuable member of our community,” Harvard President Drew Faust said in the statement. Faust also serves on the board.

Lee’s parents emigrated from Shanghai and started out “penniless” in the U.S. in 1948, he said. Harvard gave him an “unparalleled” educational opportunity when he arrived as an undergraduate in 1968, Lee said.

Harvard Parent

Lee has also seen the college as a parent: One of his daughters is a Harvard College graduate and is finishing programs at Harvard Business School and the Kennedy School of Government. His other daughter graduated from Harvard Law School last year, Lee said. About 17 percent of Harvard undergraduates and 13 percent of students overall were Asian-American as of Oct. 15, 2009, according to the university’s Web site.

“The Asian community is an important part of the university,” Lee said in a telephone interview. “I think that the fact that I’m a son of immigrants and grew up when I did and how I did will contribute to my perspective as a member of the corporation.”

Harvard’s endowment, the world’s largest academic fund, dropped to $26 billion as of June 30, compared with $36.9 billion on the same date in 2008. About 38 percent of the university’s $3.8 billion in revenue came from its endowment in the year ended June 30, according to Harvard’s annual report. The endowment is managed by Harvard Management Co., under the direction of Chief Executive Officer Jane Mendillo, who started the job in July 2008.

Attracting Talent

Attracting talented faculty and students, and maintaining elite levels of teaching and research after the university’s losses is a key challenge, Lee said.

“The job is to focus on the short-term challenges, but to recognize that the long-term goal is to be able to say 25 or 50 years from now that Harvard remains the most extraordinary institution in the world,” Lee said.

As a former member of Harvard’s Board of Overseers, the second of the university’s two governing boards, Lee served on a joint committee with corporation members that selected Faust to become president in 2007.

Robert Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute, a Washington center that analyzes social and economic policy, will become a senior fellow on the board when Houghton, former chairman and chief executive officer of Corning Inc. in Corning, New York, departs.

The remaining members of the corporation are treasurer James Rothenberg, who is also chairman of Los Angeles-based Capital Research & Management Co., Nannerl Keohane, past president of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and a professor at Princeton University in New Jersey; Robert E. Rubin, who is former senior counselor at Citigroup, Inc.; and Patricia A. King, a law professor at Georgetown Law Center in Washington.