New America Foundation Close to Naming Anne-Marie Slaughter as President

Anne-Marie Slaughter, a Princeton professor and former aide to Hillary Clinton who ignited a raucous debate last year by writing about the difficulty women have in balancing career and family, is poised to take over the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan public policy institute. The foundation’s board of directors voted to name her as the organization’s new president, subject to the conclusion of contract negotiations, according to two board members.

If they can agree on terms, Ms. Slaughter would replace Steve Coll, whose five-year tenure at the foundation is soon ending. Last month Mr. Coll was named the new dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Ms. Slaughter, who is also a board member, declined comment, writing in an email that nothing has yet been decided. Mr. Coll also declined to comment on the selection process because of the confidential nature of the search.

The New America Foundation, which is based in Washington, characterizes itself on its Web site as interested in “work that is responsive to the changing conditions and problems of our 21st Century information-age economy.” Ms. Slaughter is already at the center of one of those issues: The debate about the dearth of women in top leadership roles in business and government became national news last summer after Ms. Slaughter wrote an influential article in The Atlantic magazine titled “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.”

Ms. Slaughter, a professor of politics and international affairs at Prince­ton and the director of policy planning at the State Department from 2009 to 2011, detailed the problems of helping direct America’s foreign policy and her teenaged son’s homework. Her exhortations that women stop blaming themselves and focus on the society-wide failure to support working mothers set her up as the counterpoint to Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook who has urged women to “lean in” and seize opportunities to move up the ladder. In her bestselling book “Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead,” she takes a psychological approach, telling women to overcome the “internal obstacles,” or unconscious ways they may hold themselves back.