Rudenstine's Legacy

On July 30, President Neil L. Rudenstine will step down, leaving his successor a University quite different from the one he inherited. President-elect Lawrence H. Summers will take the reins of a unified Harvard whose central administration has been strengthened over the past decade. He will preside over a University into which Radcliffe College has been absorbed and within which a new Institute for Advanced Studies is just beginning its work. But most of all, he will preside over a financially comfortable University that no longer has to worry about operating deficits and fiscal viability.

In bringing these changes to pass, Neil Rudenstine worked himself to exhaustion for Harvard, and his legacy will live for years to come. But though the University has made stunning improvements in some areas over the last 10 years, other areas, particularly undergraduate education, have received less attention. Students at the College feel increasingly separated from the upper echelons of the administration.

Rudenstine’s status as Harvard’s most successful fundraiser will be his greatest legacy. As the leader of the first University-wide capital campaign, Rudenstine was indisputably the key to Harvard’s financial health and wealth. In the first 30 months of his administration, he raised $650 million; the University later exceeded its goals for a $2.1 billion capital campaign. The growth of the endowment over Rudenstine’s tenure was in large part the result of his Herculean efforts in fundraising events and planning meetings. Attention to detail coupled with an imaginative and ambitious vision allowed Rudenstine to equip Harvard with the funding to build a University which even he is still only able to imagine.

To take advantage of this unprecedented financial security, Rudenstine built a cohesive administrative structure out of the old parochial system. By using the deans of the nine faculties as a de facto cabinet to deliberate over University-wide issues, Rudenstine centralized and coordinated many diverse and competing interests. This successful strategy provided him not only with a group on which he could rely for advice, but also with a seedbed for his interfaculty initiatives, through which faculties of different schools are able to collaborate their research in a given area. The initiatives, of which there are now 10, include such notable and successful groups as the Center for International Development and the Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative.

The support and supervision of these initiatives as well as other University activities prompted Rudenstine to resurrect the position of provost, which had been phased out in 1953 at the end of the tenure of President James B. Conant ’14. The provost position created another level of centralization that was perceived as lessening the power of the deans, who had previously been accountable directly to the president. The inevitable tension that arose between the deans and the office of the provost, which is still considered amorphous by Harvard standards, will be a legacy left to Summers, who has committed to maintaining the position.

Although the reestablishment of the provost position complicated the president’s relationship with the deans, Rudenstine was able to bring closure to one of the most complex relationships on campus: that between Harvard and Radcliffe. Through his attention to detail and skill in negotiation, Rudenstine brokered a deal that brought an end to the often unstable division between Harvard and Radcliffe. In October of 1998, Radcliffe College became the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study, with a new mission statement and full accountability to the Harvard administration. While the move unavoidably disappointed some, it brought a finality and transparency that will allow the Institute to grow and vigorously pursue its mission.

The Afro-American Studies Department is a shining and powerful example of Rudenstine’s ability to revitalize a program. When Rudenstine arrived at Harvard, the department consisted of one professor and one student. As he leaves, it is the top-ranked program of its kind in the nation. The story is now legendary; at the beginning of his tenure, Rudenstine asked DuBois Professor of the Humanities Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr. for a list of his “dream team” of Afro-American scholars. They have now been assembled and are ready to accept their first class of doctoral students this fall. Attracting the likes of Cornel West, Lawrence Bobo and William Julius Wilson was one of Rudenstine’s top priorities and one of his most tangible and personal legacies to the University.

Rudenstine’s extraordinary commitment to the Afro-American Studies Department reflects his deep belief in the value of diversity on campus. He has spoken out publicly in favor of affirmative action, defending attention to diversity in college admissions nationwide.

Furthermore, he stood behind Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Peter J. Gomes during the uproar after Gomes revealed his homosexuality. Rudenstine simultaneously affirmed the right of free speech on campus while expressing his unmitigated support for Gomes and for the principle of tolerance.

But despite these impressive accomplishments, Rudenstine’s tenure has not been perfect. In several areas, most critically undergraduate education, the University has made little progress over the last decade.

Students increasingly feel that they have no contact with Harvard’s top administrators, and with Rudenstine in particular. It was not always this way; early in his tenure, undergraduates made signs out of pizza boxes proclaiming their love for him. But Rudenstine’s feverish work on University-wide initiatives forced him to sacrifice frequent interaction with the undergraduate population of the College. Now, most students have met him only for a handshake at the beginning of their Harvard career or for a few seconds at the first-year President’s Dance.

Though Rudenstine maintained office hours open to students, only a handful were able to drop in and chat with the president. The “Days of Dialogue” event this year, in which Rudenstine and other administrators held an open discussion with students, was exceptional mostly because the opportunity for students to question Rudenstine in a public setting had never occurred before. And the termination during Rudenstine’s tenure of the position of Dean of Students, formerly held by Archie C. Epps III, eliminated the only top administrator who was directly responsible for students’ social experiences.

The sense that Rudenstine is divorced from the realities of students’ lives is reflected most prominently in the state of undergraduate education at the College. There have been some successes—the number of freshman seminars will be doubled next year, and the capital campaign has funded some new positions. But there are several widely-recognized problems that have not yet been addressed. The advising system, especially in the larger departments, is extremely deficient. The Core program desperately needs to be reformed. And the Faculty is still too small to maintain direct, active involvement with undergraduates.

During the capital campaign, the University hoped to endow 40 new FAS professorships. But only 28 were funded, and the size of the Faculty has remained relatively steady over the last decade. As a consequence of this slow growth and of the Faculty’s low turnover rate, Rudenstine has been unable to make significant progress in his stated goal of diversifying the Faculty. In addition, the University rarely grants tenure to junior Faculty members, driving many of the nation’s top scholars and teachers elsewhere.

Rudenstine will also be remembered for his part in the secret Allston land purchases that infuriated the surrounding communities. While Rudenstine finalized the deal that began during the administration of Derek C. Bok, he recently admitted that Harvard should have handled the issue differently. But Harvard’s relations with the surrounding communities have remained tense since the land-buying fiasco. The city of Cambridge has had a particularly antagonistic relationship with the University, with residents angry about development, payments in lieu of taxes and wage issues. And given the impending purchase of a major commercial office building in Watertown, Harvard will have to walk a fine line to reconcile local communities in the future.

Rudenstine will be leaving Harvard’s top post after 10 years of service to the University community, which owes him its deepest gratitude for his devotion. Shortcomings aside, Rudenstine has shepherded our academic institution with skill, civility, passion and dedication. For that we thank him and offer him our most sincere best wishes after he leaves Harvard—better than he found it.