In a Bleak Year for Candidates, 5 Possible Presidents Stand Out

They speak in terms of combinations-those who know: a scholar, innovator, financier, liberal, (not too liberal), acceptable to students, tolerable to alumni.

"Where are they going to find someone like that?" asked a recent alumnus. "The best they can hope for is a man with a mind small enough to take the job and an ego large enough to think he can do it."

Many have suggested the next president of Harvard might be found in Princeton: Carl Kaysen, former professor of Economics here and now head of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study. "I'm crazy," Kaysen says, "but I'm not that crazy."

And so the field narrows by one.

There are more vacancies in college presidencies this year than enlistment openings at the Cambridge Army recruitment center. Columbia only filled its presidency this summer after nearly two years of looking. Asked who had turned it down, one student replied, who didn't? Stanford is still searching for its perfect combination, as are Boston University, M.I.T., Brandeis, even Suffolk University, just to mention the schools in the Boston area.

Becoming a college president today is like signing on to administer the Munich pact in 1939. With its financial base (government and foundation grants) crumbling, Harvard is committed already to several new and costly projects (The Afro-American Research Institute, merger with Radcliffe, Gund Hall, and the new science center). The Faculty is divided and restless. The students, united and angry.

The next president will have to be not only qualified (by the Corporation's criteria) but also flexible, like able, innovative, brash, and yes, more than a little crazy.

Five names, indicative of the types of men as well as possibly the men the Corporation will be choosing among, come to mind: Derek C. Bok, 40, dean of the Harvard Law School:

You can't really say whether Bok has been successful at the Law School. You can say he's endured, which is no small feat.

Bok, a popular young professor on the Law School Faculty, was named dean two and a half years ago when Erwin H. Griswold resigned to become U.S. Solicitor General. Griswold ran the traditionally close-knit Law School with an iron hand and escaped from the job just before students mounted a series of campaigns against many of the older traditions. Bok inherited both the student dissatisfaction and a tradition-minded conservative faculty, and he has spent the better part of his term reconciling the two.

Skeptical faculty members who two years ago thought Bok was too young for the deanship now praise his performance. He has succeeded in changing one of the most staid laws schoolsin the country with grade reforms and more relevant courses, and still kept adamant opponents of both from leaving.

"These have been pretty rugged years for the Law School," one professor said. "You have to give credit to Bok for making it through without having the Law School blow."

A graduate of Stanford, Bok studied for his Law degree at Harvard where he became a friend and somewhat protege to Kingman Brewster, then a professor at the Law School. As a law professor and dean Bok has almost coincidentally developed the right friends in the right places: Brewster, Archibald Cox and John Dunlop (with whom he co-authored books), professors in the Kennedy School of Government and Economics Department where he was an associate, and most important Overseers and Corporation members-many of whom take a special interest and pride in the Law School as alumni.

HIS POPULARITY among faculty and alumni has not come at the expense of students. He is probably more popular with his own students than any other faculty member in the University. To Bok's credit, his popularity derives primarily from stands on controversial issues.

An active liberal, Bok took a major role in the campaign to have G. Harrold Carswell defeated in the Senate last year, flying down to Washington to testify against the man.

Within the University, Bok was one of the first administrators to recognize the institutional racism in Harvard's construction unions and personally intervened in the construction of the new Law School classroom building to increase the number of black workers. When the unions balked, Bok took his case to Washington and conducted between his own spot checks on the construction site to insure that the blacks were being hired.

Because his accomplishments have been confined to the Law School, it is unclear what kind of reception he would get in the College. One liberal faculty member described him somewhat disdainfully as a "social-intellectual type," but admitted to a preference for Bok over nearly all other Harvard professors.

Should Harvard decide to look within the University for its next president, the biggest plus in Bok's favor is that he has few enemies. He manages to be personable and still maintain a sense of formality.

The one question that arises is over his relatively young age. It's the same question that was raised two and a half years ago at the Law School-and answered satisfactorily.

Robert D. Cross, 46, president of Swarthmore College:

The "but-who-ever-heard-of-Nathan-Pusey-either" candidate, with a twist. An obscure name to most undergraduates, Cross is both known and liked among Harvard Faculty members. When the Faculty Council met two weeks ago to consider professors and administrators outside of Harvard, Cross was highly praised.

A 1947 graduate of Harvard (and classmate of Corporation member Hugh Calkins), he took his masters and doctorate degrees in history here, taught for several years at Swarthmore and later at Columbia where he served three years as chairman of the history department. In 1967, he resigned to become president of Hunter College in New York and took the presidency of Swarthmore in June, 1969.

By all objective criteria, he is an established history scholar: an author of two books, editor of another anthology, and a man who once turned down a professorship in the Harvard History department. Petty Faculty jealousies over the appointment of a non-Harvard academic would most likely not arise were he to become The Man.

At Swarthmore, Cross has also weathered his share of campus turmoil. If the Corporation is thinking that a man needs a little battle-seasoning before he hits the beaches of Cambridge, Cross has logged enough hours of crisis time to be moderately if not highly acceptable. After each he has also come out looking human.

He took over at Swarthmore just a few months after former president Courtney Smith died of a heart attack during a black students' sit-in. The main issue was black admissions and one of Cross's first acts was to carry through on the university's promise to increase black enrollment.

Last Fall, there was a second sit-in demanding a black cultural center at the otherwise quiescent Quaker campus. The sit-in ended peacefully. The center is opening this term.

Politically, Cross is considered non-political, but liberal. He signed the university presidents' telegram to President Nixon last Spring and was the only college administrator named to the American Association of University Professors committee investigating the Kent State and Jackson State murders.

Although Swarthmore did not cancel classes during the student strike last Spring (a position many Faculty members now admire) and voted down the Princeton Plan, Cross did encourage canvassing and work-study sessions through that period, and allowed professors to delay exams if they wished.

"He's easy-going and informal with students," one Swarthmore administrator said. "At Swarthmore at least, it's easy for him to remain visible. You don't need long appointments to see him and he doesn't stand on formality."

His experience as a college administrator, however, has been primarily with small student bodies. At Hunter College, for instance, he used to hold "brown bag lunches" every week where students could meet with him informally and chat over their peanut butter and jelly.

Writing in his 25th reunion classbook last year, Cross said "A college today stands uneasily between the turbulence we now take for granted in adolescence and the disarray of contemporary society. It's unreasonable to expect that most students will experience four 'bright college years.' ... Young people today find themselves in a society both more affluent, and so powerful, and less sure of itself (probably rightly so) than any previous American society. I hope our prescription for college students, college faculty, and college administrators can be not purgative so much as energizing."

In his address to the Swarthmore freshmen last week, he added, "a college campus is not a battlefield for warfare between generations, between classes, or between races... I do not regard peace and calmness as the vital marks of a healthy institution. But neither do I think the reconciliation of young and old, or the substitute warfare of the battlefield are the major undertakings for the college.

"The world is, I think we all agree, in a mess," he continued. "And I welcome you to Swarthmore as a place where all of us can learn to appreciate gardens and towers without mistaking them for the whole of the world or as a place to retreat."

Varicusly described as forthright, controversial, dynamic, God, a grandstander, and whatever other names might be applied to Kingman Brewster.

"Controversial," however, seems to apply best in this context and the chances of Dr. Knowles depend largely on whether the Corporation wants a man with high visibility or a Nixonesque low-profile. There are advantages to both. A quiet administrator, like Bok, might be able to hold a churned-up university community together. A controversial figure, who, like Knowles, often evokes a common sympathy and admiration during such times, might lead the University out of its present confusion.

An outspoken liberal who "enjoys controversy," according to one colleague, Knowles is proud of the fact that he can pick up the phone and bring all major news media to his office in less than an hour. In the last few years, his controversies have been well-chosen and he has almost always come out on the right side. Consequently, he has the same standing among younger interns in his hospital that Brewster has at Yale. His run-in with Nixon over being appointed and then dis-appointed as assistant secretary for health and scientific affairs only bolstered his reputation with liberals in the medical profession.

As an administrator, he is widely admired for running one of the most efficient hospitals in the country at a time when hospitals are notorious for bad management. As a fund-raiser, he is considered the best in the state.

A Harvard graduate, who also acquired a professorship of medicine at the Harvard Med School this year, Knowles has sufficient, but not outstanding academic credentials. He is not likely to annoy powerful Faculty members, however, because he would not come to the presidency carrying an academic reputation.

It is not commonplace to find doctors as university presidents; but then, this does happen to be an off-year for qualified applicants, and Knowles is said to be ecstatic over the idea. Much to Boston University's consternation, according to one source, he is reportedly holding their presidential search committee at bay while Harvard decides. Besides, Antioch College is running well under its doctor-president James Dickinson and another doctor, Calvin Plimpton just stepped down after a successful term at Amherst.

"The frankness of his ambition turns some people off because they think it's unseemly for a physician," said one Bostonian. Most likely, it will affect the Corporation the same way.

Still, Knowles is qualified by even the most rigid criteria. And if the Corporation is looking for a Kingman Brewster who has proven he can survive in less serene settings than New Haven, Knowles' honesty both about his opinions and his own ambitions cannot be overlooked. To his name, add "dark horse."

Should Harvard find itself stymied in its search for younger presidential candidates (which at present does not appear likely) one can expect the Pope John theory to be reactivated.

The theory has it that a distinguished older president, 55-60, might be able to exert more leadership in the University than a young dynamo-type because his esteem and judgment would be more widely respected and trusted. Although he could only serve until the mandatory retirement age of 66, by that time the University might be more stable and more qualified younger candidates would be available.

As a theory, this view has its own clique of supporters. But the problem of finding the right man remains.

Purcell, at 58, has perhaps more respect and trust than any other member of the Faculty. He has taken his share of stands on the issues and yet never become deeply embroiled in internal Faculty politics.

A Nobel Prize winner in 1952, he continued his research in physics and remains one of the most admired teachers in the University. He is, in the words of one prominent Faculty member, "indisputably a great scholar" and, in the words of another, "a man whom you respect a lot, especially when you disagree with him. He's usually got a good reason for doing what he does."

Purcell did not graduate from Harvard (he's an alumnus of Purdue as is astronaut John Glenn, but Glenn's chances of becoming president of Harvard vanished when he fell in the bathtub during the Ohio Senatorial primary and broke his coccyx, making it virtually impossible for him to lead the commencement procession around the Yard without limping). Purcell did get his Ph.D. here. Scientists have fared well in the Harvard presidency. Pusey's predecessor, chemist James B. Conant, served for 20 years before retiring to become high commissioner of occupied Germany in 1953.

Should Purcell or someone like him (possibly Edwin O. Reischauer) become president, it has been strongly recommended that a man like Derek Bok be named to the new provost or chancellor position and groomed to take over when the president reaches retirement age.

Just as there is a Pope John approach to the presidency, there is also a "right man at the right time" approach, and support for it is more emotional than rational.

By the Corporation's announcement last week that it wanted a man with a primary academic commitment, politicians should by all rights be excluded. Ramsey Clark is a politician: A Justice Department lawyer under Bobby Kennedy and Attorney General under Johnson. His academic credentials are pretty meager compared to those of the other four: two years at the University of Texas, where he graduated with an A.B.; another year and a half at the University of Chicago where he simultaneously took his law degree and a masters in history. He's been to Harvard less than ten times.

It's surprising to hear his name mentioned so often and in so many of the right places. Unlike a John Gardner, Clark is admired for being right rather than thinking right. "He's a concerned man with sound developed instincts about flaws in our society," one Washington observer said.

It is Clark's innate understanding of what is happening in this country that forces his inclusion on a list of possible Harvard Presidents-no matter what the odds against him are.

He is probably the one conceivable presidential candidate who would be rated desirable rather than acceptable by students. A man who could come into Harvard from the outside and through genuine personal magneticism unite the Faculty with some sense of why it's here, and yet someone who would never be charged with tempering in Faculty matters.

If, as one Faculty member suggested, McGeorge Bundy is the man that rational men will measure other candidates against, Clark is the standard, perhaps, on which to measure their "goodness": a sentimental choice in a time when sentiments may be the only thing left we can trust.