The University of Pennsylvania Board of Trustees has nominated Amy Gutmann to be the next President; the Board votes on the nomination on February 20, but in all likelihood, it’s a done deal.

Gutmann is currently Provost of Princeton University and Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Politics; she is also one of that small number of political theorists in Political Science departments who does work that is always of interest to philosophers. (Others would certainly include Charles Beitz and Philip Pettit at Princeton, Dennis Thompson at Harvard, and Brian Barry and Jon Elster at Columbia, among others.)

Gutmann will replace Judith Rodin, who raised tons of money, helped yuppify the immediate neighborhood around Penn, and who raised gaming the US News undergraduate rankings to an art form. (A former Dean at Penn once said to me, “I wouldn’t want to be around if someone audited the books.”) My guess is that Amy Gutmann will take a more honorable approach, which may mean Penn’s undergraduate ranking in US News will drop in the short term. But from what little I know, I have to say that Penn has made a splendid choice, and it’s a real loss for Princeton.