Mitt Romney for president — of Harvard University?

The solution to the “almighty mess” Harvard University is in after months of controversy over hate speech?

Hire retiring Utah Sen. Mitt Romney as president of the campus to “clean it up,” the president of the American Jewish Congress, Daniel Rosen, proposed in a Washington Post op-ed published this week.

“Romney has been nothing short of a profile in courage in the Senate,” wrote Rosen, a lifelong Democrat and Harvard graduate with no connection to Romney. He acknowledged many at the elite Ivy League university likely won’t share the politics of the former Massachusetts governor and 2012 Republican presidential nominee.

But what matters more, the grandson of Holocaust survivors said, “is that Romney has the moral courage and independence to identify the root sources of antisemitism at the university, address the decline in Jewish student applications and enrollment, and teach a new generation of young adults the importance of mutual tolerance and civilized coexistence.”

Rosen said it’s “devastating that Harvard has failed to vigorously address the unchecked antisemitism on campus,” in recent years, seeing “an unconscionable spike in — and even worse, an administrative tolerance of — hate speech directed at Jews, including targeting Jewish students,” and called the university’s response “ramshackle and unproductive, to put it mildly.”

The Utah senator, who holds an MBA and a law degree from Harvard, has a “unique bridge-building character,” Rosen said, “precisely what Harvard needs in an age of toxic polarization. A Harvard alumnus, he is an eloquent and experienced administrator who has consistently demonstrated his political independence in defense of what is right, rather than what is expedient.”

Harvard is looking for a new leader after its first Black president, Claudine Gay, resigned in January following a congressional hearing where she answered a question about whether “calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment” by saying, “It can be, depending on the context.” Gay also faced allegations of plagiarism.

An interim president was put in place, longtime University Provost Alan Garber, but there hasn’t been any rush to start the search for a permanent replacement for Gay, according to the campus newspaper, The Harvard Crimson.

Romney had no comment on the suggestion he should be Harvard’s next leader.

Now 77, Romney announced last fall he wouldn’t seek a second Senate term this year. While he didn’t offer specifics about his future plans, he said then he’s “too much a person of action to want to be relaxing for the rest of my life. So I will be actively involved in politics and probably trying to encourage my party to return to sanity.”

There has also been speculation Romney could play a role in a 2034 Winter Games in Utah after leading the organization of the state’s first Olympics in 2002, although he said then that running the massive event is a job for the “next generation.”

.