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The Presidency: Clip and Save

By Robert Decherd and Scott W. Jacobs

(The following is the first of a two part feature giving background sketches on the 23 remaining candidates for the Harvard presidency. Part H will appear in Saturday's CRIMSON.)

The brief biographical sketches are by no means definitive. This is not a simple listing of accomplishments [there a Who's Who on the third floor of Lamont]; rather the intention is to give a sense of each man drawn from conversations with students and faculty at Harvard and other universities around the country.)

Bernard Bailyn, 48, chairman of the Harvard History Department:

Few will dispute that Bailyn is "a scholar's scholar" in the Harvard History Department, but even less will agree on what that means. After getting his Ph. D. here in 1953, Bailyn moved from assistant to associate to full professor in 1961 and became Winthrop Professor of History in 1966.

He's been a leading academic in his field of Colonial American History and won the Pulitzer and Bancroft Prizes in 1968 for his book "The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution."

Unlike many of his social science colleagues, Bailyn is not tainted with a long history of collaboration in foreign policy. He is a pure academic; but considered both an academic and political conservative. His undergraduate course is one of the most rigorous in the University and his graduate students have simple, often exaggerated, stories of his rigidity.

"When he cuts you up, he's always the first to offer to drive you to the infirmary," one student admirer offered in his defense.

Other grad student comments vary greatly, but almost all recognize Bailyn's essential academic decency-cloaked under a few layers of sharp, supra-rational logic. "He's very diplomatic," according to one department cliche, "on his own terms." According to another. "Bailyn's the kind of man who plays his cards inside his chest."

When the Faculty split into caucuses two years ago, Bailyn was fortunate enough to be on a leave of absence and carries no scars from the hectic '68-'69 academic year. Still there is little doubt among anyone that he is strongly tied to the Faculty conservatives.

Derek C. Bok, 40, dean of the Harvard Law School:

There is a circle of three men in the latest list of 23 who can be described as academics, administrators, and labor mediators in no particular order. They are Derek Bok, Dean Dunlop, and Michigan President Robben Fleming; all are very different types of men.

Bok is by far the youngest, but has outstanding credentials in all three fields. He has the distinction of being considered Dunlop's protege as a labor negotiator, and Kingman Brewster's protege as an administrator (which is a bizarre combination). He has co-authored books with both Dunlop and Archibald Cox: and is an associate of both the Kennedy School of Government and the Economics Department.

When he became dean of the Law School, he inherited a nascent student curriculum revolt, the beginnings of the largest fund-raising drive in Law School history, and a great deal of skepticism from older Law School professors.

The fund drive turned into a 5 million dollar success-the biggest single fund-raising drive ever conducted for a law school. The curriculum has already moved substantially toward a pass-fail system, and more changes are expected over the next two years. Contrary to some of the more dire predictions, the Law School is still standing.

Bok is not as well known outside the Law School as other Harvard men under consideration, and many think this is a plus because he can come into the post as an outsider to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Though he does not project a forthright charismatic image, Bok is quietly appealing and knows how to play the political games without being Machiavellian about it.

Law student enthusiasm over his appointment two years ago has cooled into a sullen acceptance. "That's the Bok way of doing things," one second-year student shrugged during a curriculum reform discussion. "If you understand the Law School, you know that nothing changes very fast over there... but lots of things have changed [in the last two years]. Bok's a diplomat-wishy-washy on one level, effective on another."

A 1951 graduate of Stanford, Bok graduated from the Law School in 1954 and became a professor there in 1961.

Harvey Brooks, 55, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Engineering and Applied Physics:

Whenever President Pusey has dirty work to be done involving defense-related research, he calls on Harvey Brooks. This reliance stems mainly from Brooks's acceptability to liberal Faculty members and his image of being a fair man above all else.

Since the Mansfield Amendment was introduced in 1968, threatening about 70 per cent of the School of Engineering's government subsidy, Brooks has been jockeying between Cambridge and Washington in order to maintain Defense Department research grants.

The Defense funds are important for several reasons, one of which is that Braooks operates the School of Engineering within the bounds of a fixed endowment which has to support nearly 30 full professors.

To keep pace with the rest of the engineering field, Brooks has had to restructure the graduate school to make possible the introduction of computer science, environmental science, and solid-state physics. Somehow, he has managed ?o maintain the sanity of the Graduate School throughout the transition.

Brooks has been a prominent figure in fund-raising for the University science program in general, and as dean of the Graduate School, he has become something of a scientific statesman.

Brooks is well-known among Faculty members, and he was widely praised for his role as chairman of the University sub-committee appointed to study the Cambridge Project.

Brooks is a 1937 graduate of Yale, and holds Ph. D. and Doctor of Science degrees from Harvard.

Richard N. Cooper, 36, Yale professor of Economics:

Cooper was one of the three men added to the final list of 23, He is the second-youngest man still under consideration, and while he is not a widely-known figure, he is held in high regard by the Yale Economics Department.

Cooper does not like to commit himself publicly on controversial issues, instead pushing his ideas within small groups. He has been an economic consultant to various political figures, and is presently doing research abroad on leave from Henry Kissinger's White House staff.

In 1968, Cooper served Bobby Kennedy as his chief economic advisor, and later joined Hubert Humphrey's campaign. He was a staff economist on the President's Council of Economic Advisors before becoming an assistant professor at Yale in 1963.

Cooper is somewhat of a surprise addition in light of his limited administrative experience. but he was an effective fund-raiser for both Kennedy and Humphrey.

Granted leave at Yale in 1966, Cooper has authored several books on economics and is presently writing a book for the Council on Foreign Affairs. In economics, he is considered left of center but he has managed to maintain good relations with his more conservative colleagues.

Cooper graduated from Oberlin College in 1956, and later received a Ph. D. from Harvard in 1962.

William H. Danforth, 44, dean of the Washington University Medical School:

Danforth is a native of St. Louis, and after attending Princeton and the Harvard Medical School (1951), he returned there as an intern before joining the Faculty of Washington University in 1954.

He is now president of the Danforth Foundation in addition to his duties as dean of the Medical School. He is less of a national figure than many of the other candidates, primarily because he has concentrated his energies on, among other things, keeping Washington University solvent through the graces of the Danforth Foundation.

Danforth is not a national political figure, and has served on few national councils or committees because of his involvement at the University and in St. Louis.

He was an assistant professor of Medicine from 1960-65, associate professor from 1965-67, and has been a full professor since 1967. He was named vice chancellor for medical affairs and dean of the Medical School in 1965 while he was still an associate professor.

Paul M. Doty, 50, Mallinckrodt Professor of Biochemistry:

Another Harvard academic, another nationally known scientist who has published over 200 scientific articles, and a man with a number of connections and committee assignments both inside Harvard and out.

Since he joined the Harvard Faculty in 1948, Doty has served on a series of important Faculty committees, the most well-known being his own committee to restructure the Gen Ed program in the early sixties.

He has long been one of the most active professors in the old and the new style faculty politics, but he has not gotten pinned down to any particular label.

He's a maverick, with supporters and detractors in both camps.

(In two separate conversations with a member of the liberal and a member of the conservative caucus last spring, one identical phrase cropped up: "He's one of theirs.")

In the Washington circuit, Doty has served on several committees involved in the relation of science and international affairs. He was chairman of the committee overseeing the science exchange program with the Soviet Union from 1960-63, and a member of the President's Science Advisory Committee from '61-'65. He's also done work on arms control and disarmament.

Doty graduated from Pennsylvania State College in 1941, and did his graduate study at Columbia.

John T. Dunlop, 56, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences:

"Take a picture of him on the phone. He's always on the phone," a secretary told a CRIMSON photographer last year. And he is. Dunlop chairs so many committees and has his hand in so many other non-academic projects, there is speculation that the Corporation can't make him president because it would entail too much trouble filling his other positions.

Within the University, Dunlop's major posts include Dean of the Faculty, chairman of the Faculty Council, chairman of the Committee on Governance, chairman of the Committee on Students and Community Relations, former chairman of the Ec Department, and the General Education Committee, chairman of the defunct Committee of 15, and Dunlop Committee on Recruitment and Retention of Faculty, active member on about 15 others.

He did not go to Harvard (graduated from Berkeley in 1935) and appears lacking in much of the polish traditionally associated with the Harvard administration. Coming into the deanship in the middle of restructuring debates and Faculty power struggles, his blunt manner has been his greatest virtue. In departmental meetings, he's been blunt and open enough to gain the trust of widely divergent Faculty groups.

Much of his savvy comes from years of labor mediation, in many cases "crisis mediation." But there's an additional dimension to it. Because Dunlop seems more comfortable with the head of the Carpenter's Union than at Faculty teas, is one professor explained, he's duly unimpressed with much of the pomp and grandeur of the University.

His eye goes to the practicalities of a situation-budgets, contracts, salaries and compromises-before the formalities. He's a man that the University needs but where is a question that the Corporation and Dunlop will work out together.

Robert H. Ebert, 56, dean of Harvard Medical School:

"Ebert," one associate said, "has never backed away from anything, and I think he would welcome the challenge [of the presidency]."

Ebert must see some challenge as well in his present job because he gave up one of the more prestigious medical positions in the United States-chief of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital-in order to become dean of the Medical School in 1965.

Since then, he has concentrated on involving the Medical School in the University as well as the outside community. Last fall, his brainchild, the Haryard Community Health Plan, was instituted for the first time, replete with pre-payment plans and group practices.

Ebert's colleagues describe him as a staunch liberal, a mediator rather than a pusher, a listener rather than a dictator. He has assumed an outspoken political position on the war-much to the chagrin of older conservative alumni-and last October he joined a group from the Med School handing out leaflets at the Moratorium rally.

Ebert is no stranger to the College: the issue of the expansion of the Affiliated Hospital Center in Roxbury was one of the foci of the 1968 SDS demonstrations.

Ebert's activist role in community affairs far predated student interest in community reform, and he has long experience with land acquisition and tenant relocation. He has steadily displayed a diplomacy which one of his students once described as that of "a shrewd political person."

There is no doubt that Ebert fits the Corporation's bill as far as fund-raising goes: in the past five years, he has amassed over $30 million for the Medical School alone.

One serious drawback is Ebert's age (56), which is the second-oldest of the remaining 23 candidates. He holds only an honorary degree from Harvard, having received his M. D. from the University of Chicago and a Doctor of Philosophy from Oxford.

Robben W. Fleming, 54, president of the University of Michigan:

In two years as president of Michigan, Fleming has managed to acquire the dubious reputation of being the Kingman Brewster of the Midwest.

Fleming is a Midwesterner straight down the line, having attended Beloit College as an undergraduate and later doing graduate work at Wisconsin, Michigan and Michigan State.

The Michigan Daily characterizes Fleming as "a typical traditional-liberal type." Fleming was a professor of law and chancellor of the University of Wisconsin before moving to Michigan, and is by profession a labor mediator. He has a long association as advisor to the National Labor Mediation Boards.

Fleming's first two years at Michigan have been virtually devoid of major disturbances, due partly to his talent as a peacemaker and mediator. He settled a student strike in the fall of 1969 by calling in police-though he was reluctant to do so-but he vehemently refused to allow the National Guard on campus.

A Black Action Movement strike this year was successfully diverted by Fleming; he supports the right of students to enroll in ROTC but he is mum on war research and other "hot" issues.

Fleming did make a public statement in favor of the October Moratorium last fall, and openly admits that American involvement in Vietnam was a mistake. He once spoke on the same program with Clark Clifford and Rennie Davis, something President Pusey would likely not do.

Tuesday, Fleming told the Daily that he "has no intention of going anywhere else at this point in time" and, "I wonder why anyone wants to be a president of any university."

Edwin L. Goldwasser, 51, deputy director of the National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill. and professor of Physics at the University of Illinois:

While displaying no obvious political flavor, Goldwasser has evoked consistently favorable committee response from Washington during the past decade as a major proponent of the Accelerator Laboratory.

Goldwasser played an integral role in the development of the Laboratory the largest of its kind in the world and provided leadership during a touchy housing controversy which evolved from land acquisition for the laboratory site.

At the time, there was no fair housing practices act in Batavia (a suburb of Chicago), and the Laboratory project met bitter opposition from the black community because no alternate housing was being provided for displaced black families.

Goldwasser responded to the blacks by establishing an inter-city program which trained black workers to occupy technical jobs at the Laboratory, and in doing so, he gained their support.

A 1940 graduate of Harvard, Goldwasser took his Ph. D. at Berkeley ten years later. His main academic concern is elementary particle physics.

David A. Hamburg, 45, chairman of the Psychiatry Department at the Stanford Medical School:

Hamburg is known at Stanford as a "low-key type." He is a proven scholar, having served as director of the Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago before taking his present post at Stanford.

Although he has had limited contact with undergraduates, Hamburg has served in several important administrative capacities. The most notable was during Stanford's own search for a president two years ago when Hamburg was the coordinator for the three committees involved in the screening process: alumni, faculty, and student.

During that period, Hamburg was, according to one committee member, "a mediator to the point that we didn't know where he stood at times, but overall a very effective figure."

At the Medical School, Hamburg has built the Psychiatry Department from virtually nothing into one of the best five or six departments in the country. The Medical School is not well-endowed, and yet Hamburg has been able to garner support for the department he created.

One innovation that Hamburg has instituted is the appointment of a member of the Psychiatry Department as an ombudsman-a neutral investigator in disputes between faculty and administration, faculty and students, or administration and students.

At present, Hamburg is himself being considered for provost of Stanford. One of his major drawbacks apparently is that few undergraduates are familiar with him.

Hamburg is noted for his sensitivity to the idea of academic freedom, and this is said to be one of the few issues which can visibly raise his ire.

Hamburg has no ties with Harvard; he was an undergraduate at the University of Indiana and later received his M. D. there. He spent his residency at Yale.

G. Alexander Heard, 53, Chancellor of Vanderbilt University:

Heard is the man President Nixon chose last May to be his special advisor on campus unrest. After several perfunctory and well-publicized meetings, that consultation broke up and Heard returned to Nashville.

Heard is highly-respected as an educator and political scientist. He has authored four books on Southern politics, and is generally regarded as a liberal Democrat.

After joining the Vanderbilt faculty in 1952 as professor of Political Science, Heard became dean of the Graduate School in 1958. He was then named chancellor in 1963.

The position as President Nixon's personal advisor provided Heard with national exposure, but no one has really resolved the outcome of his discussions with the President.

A possible catch as far as the job at Harvard is concerned is speculation that Heard was offered the presidency at Columbia in 1969 and Vanderbilt made him pledge to remain on there as chancellor. How binding such a pledge would be in relation to Harvard-if it actually was made-is not known. was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and should he be selected, would be the first Harvard president from the deep South.

Serious consideration of Heard would surprise many Faculty members here because he is not well-known in Eastern circles, despite the fact that he took his M. A. and Ph. D. from Columbia. Heard

Carl Kaysen, 50, director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton:

If anyone is wondering what's happened to MacGeorge Bundy in this selection process, he is safely ensconced in New York talking about what a great idea it would be to have Carl Kaysen as Harvard's 25th president.

Kaysen became a professor of Economics at Harvard in 1955 while Bundy was Dean of the Faculty and followed him to Washington in 1961 as deputy special assistant for national security affairs until 1963. He's been an active consultant on state department strategy since 1947, while building an academic reputation first as a Junior Fellow here from 1947-50 and through the fifties and sixties as a professor.

Few of his Harvard colleagues were surprised when Kaysen moved from Littauer Professor of Economics in 1966 to head the research-oriented Institute for Advanced Studies.

Kaysen has been one of the most outspoken advocates of pure scholarship-the more rigorous the better. His latest book concludes that universities like Harvard are financially doomed if they continue to train undergraduates. Instead, he suggests the universities immediately be turned into graduate schools.

In a Daedelus-sponsored discussion of student participation on Faculty tenure committees, he said, "The great work of the university is intellectual. No one who has not made that commitment-and very few graduate students have made it-is entitled to participate at this level of decision-making.... I predict that if students come on [faculty committees], the faculty will go off."

Kaysen, however, is a scholar with a quick logical mind and acerbic tongue. He is more comfortable and convulsive with his intellectual peers, but shows an intense dedication to his own graduate students.

How this kind of intellectualism can be brought back to a Harvard significantly changed from the one Kaysen left in 1966 brings out all of the bitter polarizations in the faculty. As would be the case with Bundy, many of the young liberals and students think choosing Kaysen would be a deliberate reach back for the good old days with Mac. Conservatives appear delighted at the idea.

Donald Kennedy, 39, chairman of the Stanford Biology Department:

The number of West Coast professors has been pared down considerably, but even on the larger list, Kennedy's name is clearly one of the most academically reputable.

Harvard's newest member of the Board of Overseers, elected last Spring, is both a distinguished neuro-biology researcher and prominent Stanford professor active in several faculty committees.

He reportedly turned down the presidency of Stanford, but with an A. B. (52), A. M. ('54), and Ph. D. ('56) from Harvard, he would be far more likely to take an offer from Harvard, according to colleagues.

Within the Stanford faculty, he is a staunch defender of academic freedom an equally staunch opponent of campus violence, according to one editor of the Stanford Daily. The Daily has had its own run-in this fall with Kennedy after he led a faculty campaign to censure them for a radical article they ran under the by-line of a member of the Bay Area Revolutionary Union.

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