A New Dean For the GSD

THREE AND ONE-HALF years ago, the Graduate School of Design (GSD) moved from its cramped headquarters in Robinson Hall into Gund Hall's spanking new, multi-tiered studio without walls. Architects had laboriously designed the $8-million building to break down internal divisions within the school, which traditionally has been extraordinarily fragmented along departmental lines. But such drawing board solutions rarely resolve intricate personal, departmental or scholarly disputes, especially in the GSD, where a talent for Byzantine politics is a prerequisite for survival.

There are many historical and institutional reasons for the discord that now cripples the GSD: the last dean's laissez-faire approach left the school in administrative turmoil and on the brink of fiscal disaster; the relatively small GSD is especially vulnerable at Harvard, where each "tub" must stand on its own budgetary "bottom"; and physical designers, quantitative planners, and user-oriented GSD students and faculty have continually disputed the appropriate recipe for a design education. The list goes on and on.

But the GSD has not been guided down a twisted path simply by the quirks of the past or the idiosyncrasies of the school's bureaucratic structure. The GSD's administrative leader strongly shapes its direction, as the current dean, Maurice D. Kilbridge, has illustrated.

Kilbridge took over as acting dean in the fall of 1969, a Business School economist who had specialized in applying analytical techniques to urban problems. Kilbridge was not President Nathan M. Pusey's first choice to fill the position permanently; originally only a baby sitter, Kilbridge ascended to the permanent deanship after Pusey had received a round of "no, thank you's" from several more attractive candidates.

In the last six years Kilbridge has guided the school to its feet financially--it now operates just into the black--and created some sense out of the chaos left by his predecessor. His Business School background has helped the GSD: as confidential visiting committee minutes revealed last week state.

But those minutes (now withdrawn by the embarrassed visiting committee which is still in the process of writing the normal milquetoast pap that passes for governing board oversight) also seem to reflect a consensus on the panel--shared by many GSD faculty and students--that Kilbridge's administration has been a "receivership" and that "Kilbridge cannot provide continued intellectual leadership..."

The minutes also touch on educational stagnation within the GSD, which in many ways grows from budget balancing moves that have boosted the ratio of student to faculty from 8.3 to 1 in 1969 to 11.5 to 1 this year. For example, the visiting committee record refers to the panel members' "impression of a pervading boredom and lack of excitement." Similarly, the minutes indicate that "several members" saw a need to find a new dean who can "stimulate the sense of purpose and mission which the committee found lacking in both faculty and students, as well as to attract a higher caliber of faculty."

Kilbridge's Business School origins and lack of celebrity status are not per se compelling reasons to question his ability to lead the GSD. But the school has not accepted Kilbridge as its leader for far more substantive reasons: the dean has repeatedly demonstrated an insensitivity to the needs of his students and faculty and a propensity for cunning half-truths.

THE EVENTS OF the last week are illustrative. The spark of the dispute was a Seattle Times news report on comments made by the dean in Seattle, Washington, in mid-February. In the story, Kilbridge is quoted as saying, "You have to depend on biological replacement of teachers, and they generally stop learning at the age of 35" and that "practicing architects don't even have a vocabulary to share their experienkes with others." While the article is not free from sloppy reporting, two witnesses have vouched for its overall accuracy. Kilbridge, for his part, has failed to request any retraction of the article he calls "so full of inaccuracies it's ridiculous." And to combat the charges he has instructed students and faculty to read a copy of a speech he delivered at a Seattle luncheon without noting that several of the more controversial statements reported in the Times account originated from a late afternoon question-and-answer session Kilbridge held before a different audience. Such action, hardly designed to build a bond of trust, underlines a disturbingly pervasive lack of communication--evident in remarks Kilbridge and GSD students traded in a meeting last week. Similarly, the uproar over the Times story is most significant as an index of the volatility of the policy differences that Kilbridge has shown himself incapable to resolve.

Kilbridge's ability to lead the school is also limited by his repeated disingenuousness. The fall 1975 report of a University panel investigating the GSD's decision not to rehire an out-spoken assistant professor in 1969 admonishes the dean several times for being unhelpful. At one point, this report admits that "many" of the panel's five members have a "lingering doubt" whether Kilbridge was "as candid and forthcoming as he might have been." This side of the dean also emerged in 1972 after the Corporation dismissed grievances against him. Instead of seeking reconciliation with the senior professors who filed the charges, the dean issued a letter to alumni praising the fine state of affairs in the GSD, hardly an accurate appraisal of a school wracked by dissension.

The GSD has reached a watershed this year. While Dean Kilbridge has met the bookkeeping requirements of his position, he has also shown he is incapable of elevating the GSD past the narrow goal of solvency. It is time for Maurice Kilbridge to step down. And it is past time for President Bok to take steps to give the 600 students at the GSD the education they are paying for. The Graduate School of Design has hidden behind the Harvard name long enough.