Governing Boards Elect First Bok Aides

Harvard's Governing Boards yesterday approved the selection of the first three members of President-designate Derek C. Bok's administration.

The Corporation and Overseers elected Hale Champion financial vice-president of the University and named Walter J. Leonard, now assistant dean of the Law School, and Stephen B. Farber '63 assistants to the President.

Champion, presently vice-president for Finance, Planning and Operations at the University of Minnesota, is the first of three vice-presidents expected to be picked by Bok.

At Harvard, Champion will help formulate financial policy and will be responsible for physical planning, development and construction. He will also oversee student housing, food services and the Department of Buildings and Grounds.

Both Leonard, the first black named to the Bok administration, and Farber, a 29-year-old former executive assistant to New Jersey Governor, Richard J. Hughes, will be chiefly concerned with community and minority issues.

Black Recruiter

Leonard, who is probably one of the five most respected faculty among students at the Law School, has played a major role in recruiting black students and developing black-oriented programs at the school.

Last fall, he organized and directed a highly successful three-day symposium on black lawyers in America at the Law School.

Farber is by far the youngest of the three appointees, but he is experienced in community and minority affairs.

After graduating from Harvard magna cum laude, Farber went on to the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton, where he received a Master of Public Affairs degree in 1965.

As a legislative assistant to Congressman John Brademas (D-Ind.) in 1966-67, Farber worked on community relations in Washington. Earlier he had worked in a Trenton, N. J., community action program and in the New Jersey Office of Economic Opportunity.

Farber went on to become chairman of People for Auto Insurance Reform-a state-wide citizens' group in New Jersey which he presently heads-following a three-year stint as Hughes's executive assistant.

Leonard, 41, will probably assume a position closer to Bok than Farber since he has been assistant director of Admissions and Financial Aid at the Law School since 1969 in addition to being assistant dean under Bok.

As assistant director of Admissions, Leonard raised the number of blacks at the Law School to well over 100 or better than 15 per cent of the student body. Albert M. Sacks, Bok's successor as dean of the School, recently termed Leonard's handling of black admissions "a superb job."

From Alma to Atlanta

Like Farber, Leonard's background includes political experience. In Atlanta as a young man (Leonard was born in Alma, Georgia), he ran realty companies for seven years but also assisted in the campaigns of Ivan Allen Jr. for Mayor and of Samuel Phillips McKenzie for Superior Court Judge of Fulton County, Georgia.

Before coming to Harvard in 1969, Leonard taught Law at Howard University and the University of Virginia; his courses included Land Finance, the Legal Process, American Legal Institutions and the Law of Corporations.

While a student at Howard-he received a J. D. degree there in 1968-Leonard worked as a research assistant to the dean of the law school, as a law clerk in a Neighborhood Legal Service Project, and as assistant to the President at the Washington Technical Institute.

Leonard began a career in business before going over full-time to law, studying at Savannah State College, Morchouse College andthe graduate business school at Atlanta University.

He is a trustee of the Fund for Peace, a member of the Executive Council of the Greenville Clark Institute for Enforceable World Law, and a life member of the NAACP.

Leonard also serves on several national committees concerned with the progress of minority groups, and he advises on minority issues for the Association of American Law Schools and the Law School Admissions Test Council. Locally, he is a member of the Newton Fair Housing Committee.

Presumably, Leonard and Farber will handle all future incidents involving hiring practices of the University, community housing projects instigated by Harvard,-and-community-crises like that at Muddy Pond in Jamaica Plain where two small black children drowned recently.

They will also advise President-designate Bok on policies and strategies involving Harvard's position in such matters, and will help map out the direction the University will pursue within the community.

Certainly the most crucial of the three appointments announced yesterday is that of Champion as the vice-president in change of the University's clouded financial situation.

Champion, who is seven years Bok's senior, is a fellow Stanford graduate although he studied here in 1956-57 as a Nieman Fellow in Journalism and again in 1966-67 as a Fellow at the Institute of Politics in the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

At Minnesota, Champion presently manages a budget of $250 million which covers five campuses, 51,000 students and 4000 full-time faculty members. But while he may be moving down in terms of numbers of students by coming to Harvard, Champion will inherit a budget of equal proportions-at nearly $200 million-and 1000 more faculty.

Before taking his present post at Minnesota. Champion was director of finance for the state of California (there he was in charge of a paltry $5 billion budget) and served as chairman of the State Public Works Board and the State Lands Commission.

Champion was for a brief period director of the $1 billion planning and renewal program for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, and he has served on two Presidential task forces on the role of the university in urban society and on the reorganization of the Federal government.

He also was a consultant to the Kerner Commission on methods for making local government more responsive and accountable.

Champion started out in political journalism on the Milwaukee Journal and continued political reporting for the San Francisco Chronicle. His next step was to state government in California, then he later moved to Boston and finally the University of Minnesota.