Brown University’s president, Ruth J. Simmons, has told the Brown Daily Herald that she is not interested in becoming the next president of Harvard University. In the aftermath of the abrupt resignation last winter of Harvard’s president, Lawrence H. Summers (The Chronicle, February 24), Ms. Simmons’s name was often mentioned as being on the shortlist of likely successors.

In declining to be interested in the Harvard job, Ms. Simmons joined most of the other people on that speculative shortlist. Harvard, which drafted a former president, Derek C. Bok, to steer the ship in the interim, has convened a search committee that is expected to pick a new leader by next summer.