A President With the Right Priorities

AFTER LISTENING to the priorities and concerns of Neil L. Rudenstine, we are truly astounded that he was chosen to be Harvard's 26th president.

Not because we disagree with his priorities and concerns. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rudenstine's priorities and concerns are the same priorities and concerns we have plastered all over this page for years.

That's why we're so surprised. We know that the Kremlinesque presidential search committee wasn't listening to the priorities or concerns of The Crimson staff, or any other students, for that matter. Could it be that, deep down, the search committee--which we have compared unfavorably to the Mafia--shared our priorities and concerns all along?

Probably not. In any case, congratulations are due to Rudenstine, and we welcome his selection with high hopes--and high expectations. Here we provide a synopsis of some primary priorities and concerns. We sense the possibility that they may finally be addressed.

HARVARD CAN certainly boast one of the world's finest faculties. It can also boast one of the world's whitest, malest, oldest, stodgiest, non-teachingest faculties. Much can be done to attract professors of diverse races, genders, ages, academic backgrounds and educational attitudes without sacrificing quality.

Under Harvard's present system, tenure decisions are consigned to ad hoc committees of experts from outside the University. This archaic process excludes innovative scholarship, devalues teaching skills and drives young talent to other schools. Young Professor of Sino-Vietnamese History Hue-Tam Ho Tai, who received a lifetime post in 1989, was the first junior professor promoted within Harvard's History Department in 20 years. No wonder junior faculty members desert Harvard in droves.

Even President Derek C. Bok acknowledges that the time has come for a drastic overhaul of the system. Rudenstine should consider installing a tenure track. At the very least, he should abolish the ad hocs.

But administrative changes are not enough. Even the most enlightened of tenure systems will fall flat without a fundamental revolution in attitude. Bok has formally vetoed or informally discouraged the tenure applications of several popular professors, especially in non-traditional fields of scholarship, such as Alan Brinkley, now professor of history at Princeton University.

This hostility to academic exploration has been most visible toward newer departments like Afro-American Studies. This fall, Afro-Am had literally dwindled down to nothing. Under heavy pressure, the administration has finally discovered Afro-Am, pursuing professors across the nation with offers of inflated salaries and other perks. These frantic moves have begun to reap dividends, as luminaries like Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Spike Lee have agreed to accept Harvard posts.

As Harvard students, we're always glad when Harvard steals established hotshot professors in underappreciated fields from other schools. It certainly helps Harvard. But does it help the field? Does it help the overall mission of higher education? Does it help the nation? Not much. Harvard needs junior faculty in Afro-Am. It has none. Harvard must make a serious effort to increase the pool of scholars in the field and others like it. It hasn't.

These same criticisms apply to Harvard's half-hearted efforts to attract women and minority scholars. Harvard must do more to fill up the pipeline with women and minority graduate students. By making academic professions more attractive to potential scholars, Harvard can help make academia more diverse.

Finally, Harvard is notorious for its teachers' aversion to teaching, not to mention their aversion to students. Under Bok, a strong supporter of Danforth Center research into teaching methods, the Medical School instituted New Pathways, a highly successful program emphasizing student-teacher interaction in small groups. Similar progress is badly needed throughout the University.

HARVARD'S undergraduate education is a mess. As undergraduates, this bothers us quite a lot. Once again, the primary obstacle may be University attitudes--especially the attitudes at the top. To undergraduates, as to Arthur Miller's ill-fated salesman, attention must be paid.

The undergraduate program is riddled with problems--inadequate advising, inaccessible professors, clueless teaching fellows, to name a few. But most students of the College would agree that Public Enemy Number One is the big, bad, ineffectual Core Curriculum which, ironically, has been praised as one of Bok's major accomplishments.

The Core purports to expose Harvard students to a wide range of "modes of inquiry." A noble goal, perhaps. In theory, we would all emerge from Harvard understanding how philosophers, historians, social scientists, artists and writers think.

Of course, Core professors don't teach "modes of inquiry." They teach philosophy, history, social science, art and literature. To be honest, that's just as well. At least Core students have a chance of learning something.

But what do we learn? We learn the Phillips Curve (Social Analysis 10), the Pleven Plan (Historical Studies B-70), Kant's categorical imperative (Moral Reasoning 22) and Beethoven's Ninth (Lit & Arts B-69). Or maybe we learn Freud's conception of human nature (SA 11), the 95 Theses (HSB-18), Aristotle's view of It Happened One Night(MR 34) and Rembrandt's Night Watch (L&A B-25). Someone else might learn about religious revivalism in Sri Lanka (SA 36), ancient Chinese tribal patterns (HS B-2), the theology of Maimonides (MR 19) and Duke Ellington's "Take the A Train" (L&A B-71).

And how does that help us? We might be able to shoot the breeze at a particularly strange cocktail party. We don't necessarily learn anything about the origins of Western civilization. We don't necessarily learn anything about traditionally marginalized cultures, either. We don't learn much of anything, period.

To make matters worse, Core classes are logistical nightmares. They are tremendously overenrolled and incompetently organized. It's time for radical change. Distribution requirements would be an improvement. A standardized series of introductory survey courses would be an improvement. Anything would be an improvement on the irrational system now in place. Rudenstine should look into the administration and substance of the Core.

AS THE UNIVERSITY prepares for the largest fund drive in higher education history, questions of University-wide administration have become the focus of debate.

Tubs at Harvard have traditionally rested on their own bottoms. Rich Business School alumni give lots of money to the B-School. Consequently, the B-School can heat its outdoor tennis courts. Poorer Graduate School of Design alumni can't give quite as much. Consequently, the GSD must lay off its employees. In other words, this every-school-for-itself philosophy has left the pre-megabucks professional schools with ridiculous luxuries while forcing equally deserving graduate schools to cut the essentials.

Perhaps alumni would donate more money to their own schools than they would to a central pool. And we don't doubt that ambitious moves towards centralization of University authority will be vigorously opposed by independent centers of power (the Business School, Law School and Medical School) eager to protect their own prerogatives. But we urge President Rudenstine to safeguard the interests of underfunded schools whenever possible, and to challenge the prerogatives of the monoliths whenever necessary.

Whatever the structure of the University, it will have to raise a lot of money just to maintain its standards, much less improve them. With federal funding vanishing, the costs of running an educational institution are skyrocketing. Money has become more important than ever.

When money becomes very important, donors become very important. And when donors become very important, they gain a lot of influence. Too much influence, sometimes.

Rudenstine will need to keep a vigilant eye trained on potential fundraising excesses. They have certainly been committed in the past. Several years ago, Harvard awarded University Officer status to a Texas couple in return for a sizable gift to the Kennedy School of Government. More recently, the Medical School endowed a chair in honor of Prince Turki Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, an alleged kidnapper who gave the school large sums of money. When climbing into bed with moneyed interests, the University should be extremely careful to keep its academic principles independent from its funding sources--a goal that will become more difficult (and more important) to uphold as fundraising is accelerated. Harvard should not sell out to the highest bidder.

If Harvard did sell out, we might not even find out about it. Many of the University's financial transactions are hidden from oversight in a complex of holding companies--rather uncharacteristic of an academic institution.

Money is good. Money can ensure the University's security in a financially unpromising future. But the Wall Street types who play with Harvard's money need to be watched. The Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR) knows very little about Harvard's investment practices.

One of Rudenstine's first tasks should be to ovberhaul the University's outmoded financial system. A good start would be to require the Harvard Management Company to issue quarterly reports detailing the names and activities of all firms in which Harvard has any type of investment.

Rudenstine should also expand the role of the student-faculty ACSR and empower it to enact strict ethical guidelines for investments which all University affiliates would be bound to follow.

THE SHOCKING THING IS, Neil Rudenstine already seems to know all this.

While provost at Princeton, Rudenstine earned a reputation for being receptive to unconventional scholarship yet meticulous in upholding academic standards. Since his appointment, he has repeatedly emphasized the importance of attracting minorities into academia. He has announced his commitment to bolstering undergraduate education at Harvard (and said he hopes to teach a freshman seminar next spring). He has discussed the importance of University unity, the need for an overall educational mission, his aversion to absolute administrative decentralization. He plans to appoint a provost, a University-wide dean responsible for coordinating Harvard's atomized parts.

Sounds good to us. It has sounded good to a lot of students for a long time. But no one was listening. Rudenstine has been universally praised by the Princeton community as a great listener Princeton affiliates say they have never met a more accessible administrator. Rudenstine himself has promised to talk to anyone with questions and says he would consider holding office hours if there is a student market. He is even contemplating a move on campus.

Sounds good to us.

We couldn't have imagined a Harvard president who would teach a first-year seminar......But Neil Rudenstine appears to be the wave-maker we've been hoping for.