The Harvard Crimson, which broke the story Sunday afternoon, reported that students and alumni had urged the search committee to consider candidates from underrepresented groups. Bacow, a 66-year-old white man, was initially a member of the search committee and in that role had met with a group of Latino students and alumni to listen to their thoughts about leadership at Harvard, according to the Crimson.

Bacow is Hauser Leader-in-Residence at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Center for Public Leadership, after spending a decade as the president of Tufts University.

His parents were immigrants — his father was a refugee and his mother a survivor of Auschwitz — and he has strong belief in the power of education to elevate people’s lives and opportunities, several people said.

“The Harvard I have known has always stood for at least three things: the pursuit of truth, an unwavering commitment to excellence, and opportunity,” Bacow said after being elected to the role by the Harvard Corp. with the consent of the university’s Board of Overseers. “In a nation divided, these guiding ideals have never been more important.

“We should never shy away from nor be apologetic about affirming our commitment to making the world a better place through our teaching and scholarship and our commitment to truth, excellence, and opportunity for all. And we should always recognize that, for all of our progress toward realizing these ideals over decades and centuries, there is much more we can learn, more we can contribute, more we can do better.”

Bacow grew up in Michigan, attended college at MIT and went on to earn three degrees from Harvard, in law and public policy.

He spent much of his career at MIT, and his research interests include environmental policy, negotiation, economics and the intersection of law and public policy.

Lawrence S. Bacow has been named the 29th president of Harvard University. (Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard)

Lee said Bacow “will bring to the task not only wide experience, deep expertise and an intimate familiarity with Harvard’s opportunities and challenges, but also a passionate commitment to helping universities, and everyone within them, serve the larger world. He is ideally positioned to hit the ground running and keep Harvard moving ambitiously forward.”

[Harvard University president Drew Gilpin Faust to step down in 2018]

Rafael Reif, the president of MIT, said, “Larry brings to Harvard a significant wealth of knowledge, breadth, experience and vision in higher education.  . . . He has demonstrated throughout his career a deep commitment to the role of higher education as a pathway to opportunity and a better world.”

Mary Sue Coleman, president of the Association of American Universities, said Bacow had worked with her on a three-year project studying the state of public research universities and called him “a terrific choice for Harvard and for higher education in general. … I found him to be a great listener, a thoughtful colleague and smart about higher education.”

Three people died and four were rushed to a Nevada hospital with life-threatening injuries after a tour helicopter crashed into a section of the Grand Canyon on Saturday evening.

The incident occurred around 5:20 p.m. on the land of the Hualapai Nation near Quartermaster Canyon, Hualapai Nation Police Chief Francis Bradley told the Associated Press. 

Photos from the scene showed the charred wreckage of the aircraft, obscured by orange flames and billowing black smoke.

The four survivors were rushed to a hospital as Level 1 trauma patients, the Associated Press reported, meaning they had life-threatening injuries. Updates on their conditions were not available.

Lionel Douglass told ABC News that he was attending a wedding on a nearby bluff when the helicopter “fell down between the mountains” and caused “the biggest explosion you ever heard and then flames like you never seen before.”

“…I had taken my phone and I was zooming in to see if I could see anybody and a lady walked out of the flames and I just lost it.”

Once out of the flames, Douglass said, the woman collapsed to the ground and started screaming the name “Jason.”

Teddy Fujimoto was in the area taking photographs when he heard an explosion, according to CNN.

“I saw these two ladies run out of [the helicopter], and then an explosion,” he said. “One of the survivors . . . looked all bloody. Her clothes probably were burnt off. The ladies were screaming . . . It was just horrible.”

Authorities haven’t released the names of any of the people involved in the single-vehicle crash, which remains under investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board. FAA spokesman Allen Kenitzer said the Eurocopter EC130 crashed “under unknown circumstances” and suffered substantial damage.

The helicopter was owned by Papillon Airways, a sightseeing company that specializes in helicopter tours of the canyon.

No one answered at a number listed for the company.

On its website, Papillon bills itself as the world’s largest aerial sightseeing company, with helicopter tours that take off from Las Vegas and Grand Canyon National Park, including special packages that cater to time-strapped visitors to Las Vegas. Every year, it ferries about 600,000 people on helicopter and other tours. Visitors can land and even dine at scenic viewing areas, or never set foot in the actual desert.

[ A grand six-day adventure running the Grand Canyon rapids ]

Papillon says its safety regulations exceed those set by the FAA. (The government agency was formed after a 1956 crash over the Grand Canyon killed 128 people.) 

The Hualapai, a tribe of about 2,300 members, have leveraged their location at one of the most scenic sites in the world, turning it into an income source for the tribe.

Papillon’s helicopter tours have landing zones on Hualapai lands. The tribe also operates the Skywalk at Grand Canyon West, a horseshoe-shaped glass-bottomed projection with stunning, if vertigo-inducing, views of the canyon floor. The tribe charges fees for people to enter its land, including sightseeing packages that come with entry to the Skywalk, meals at viewing areas and “photo opportunities with Hualapai members.”

A post shared by Murali Krishna Vemula (@muralikvemula) on Feb 18, 2017 at 6:45pm PST

The increasing commercialization of the canyon is not without detractors, including many who argue that the constant thump of hundreds of sightseeing helicopters is unwanted noise pollution at what should be a serene, even spiritual place.

“I got up about 6 o’clock; the sun was just starting to illuminate some of the clouds on the horizon and I’m looking at colors in the clouds and it’s just incredibly quiet and it’s just this extreme Zen experience,” Rich Rudow, a Grand Canyon activist and explorer who has counted helicopter flights, told the Arizona Republic in a story about the helicopter noise.

“By 7 a.m., just boom! It’s like being hit in the head with a baseball bat . . . and the whole soundscape in Grand Canyon National Park is just destroyed for miles and mile and miles because of these helicopter operations. There’s no silence from dawn to dusk here anymore.”

Still, unwanted doesn’t necessarily mean unsafe. Even a former critic says Papillon has become a safer company in the past two decades.

Gary C. Robb, a helicopter crash lawyer, represented a woman burned in a deadly crash in 2001. He told the AP that the company has made big changes since then.

“They’ve improved their piloting qualifications as well as their maintenance over the last 10 years, and as far as I know, they’ve not had a crash since 2001,” he said.

But even with the improvements, Robb told the AP, flying in the Grand Canyon can be treacherous simply because of the number of helicopters there.

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