President-elect Jim Yong Kim was considered to be a leading candidate to coordinate President Barack Obama's efforts to combat the global HIV/AIDS pandemic prior to his appointment as the College's next president, according to media reports.
Kim could not be reached for comment as of press time.
As the State Department's global AIDS coordinator and director of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, Kim would have directed the distribution of anti-retroviral treatments in Africa and around the world. PEPFAR will likely spend $48 billion over the next five years to combat global HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
No one has yet been selected for the position, which holds the same diplomatic weight as an ambassador, according to PEPFAR's web site.
The Dartmouth was unable to confirm whether Obama would have offered Kim the position had he not been named as the College's next president, but Kim was one of the most commonly discussed candidates for the job in the media.
The Obama administration declined to comment on Tuesday about who was under consideration for the post or why it had not yet been filled. Shin Inouye, director of specialty media for the White House, told The Dartmouth that he could not comment on an "ongoing selection."
The Obama administration initially asked Mark Dybul, the AIDS coordinator under former President George W. Bush, to remain in the position. The day after the Senate confirmed Clinton as Secretary of State, however, Dybul was asked to resign, according to media reports, because of his association with abstinence-only HIV/AIDS programs during the Bush administration.
Dybul, a physician who specialized in HIV medicine, was appointed to the office in 2005. He did not respond to requests for comment.
A group of HIV/AIDS activists that was concerned about the abrupt firing lobbied the Obama administration to pick the new coordinator in a more open process. Many of the activists preferred Kim, believing him to be the "obvious" choice for the administration, Brian Hennessey, a member of the group and a health activist at the Vineeta Foundation, told The Dartmouth.
"We've kind of been caught with our pants down because we don't have a really strong second choice," Hennessey said. "As we were pushing Kim, who has a pretty incredible skill set for this position, we were checking in with him to make sure that our efforts wouldn't be for naught, that he would accept the position if it was offered, and at first he was very affirmative. Then, a couple weeks ago, he went silent."
Hennessey explained that many of the activists thought this change meant that Kim had been contacted by the Obama administration and was told not to discuss the matter. Some activists who were worried "confronted Kim and received a very vague answer," Hennessey said.
A group of students in the Harvard University AIDS Coalition also launched a lobbying campaign on Kim's behalf.
"Our campaign for Jim Kim for [Office of Global Aids Coordination] included a petition that we circulated to student groups both on Harvard's campus as well as other campuses," coalition member Isabel Kaplan, a Harvard freshman, said. "It obtained over a thousand signatures. We also called senators, Harvard professors and the Senate's Foreign Relations committee."
Board of Trustees Chairman Ed Haldeman '70 said in a previous interview with The Dartmouth that he was aware Kim was likely under consideration for the position or a similar one.
"The national press, as well as petitions that the national press reported students had signed, certainly indicated that there were many exciting possibilities in front of Dr. Kim," Haldeman said. "Knowing Dr. Kim's background and what a special person he is, I would suspect that those newspaper reports are accurate [and] that he had many attractive offers in front of him, but I'd rather not be any more specific."
An unnamed member of an anti-AIDS group told The New York Times that Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., asked Clinton if Kim could have the job and was told that she had offered it to Eric Goosby, The Times reported on Jan. 30. Goosby was the director of the Office of HIV/AIDS Policy during President Bill Clinton's administration. Goosby and Kerry's office did not respond to requests for comment.
