After Two Decades at Harvard, Bok Gets a Well-Earned Rest

When Derek C. Bok became president of Harvard University in 1971, he had learned to expect almost anything from student activists.

He particularly remembers one morning about 17 years ago when he heard a loud ruckus outside his office in Mass Hall. Drums were beating and people were shouting. He peered out into the Yard, and saw an elephant turning the corner of the building.

"At first, I thought it was some new level of student protest weaponry," Bok recalls.

But, to the president's relief, the elephant and the ruckus turned out to be part of a Lampoon rally celebrating Vietnamese elections.

"It was a little bit of a turning point," Bok says. "It was the first time a sense of humor had begun to come back on campus."

Indeed, in the ensuring years the atmosphere on campus would change dramatically. While the years immediately before Bok were marked by violent confrontations between students and the administration, the Bok years came to be known for the appearance of greater conciliation.

And although the changing national social climate may have been largely responsible for increasing calm on campus, Bok lived up to the expectations of those who had appointed him, first establishing stability and then presiding over a period of unprecedented growth.

When Bok was appointed to succeed then-President Nathan M. Pusey '28 in 1970, the campus was mired in turmoil. The previous year, students occupying University Hall had been forced out and beaten by police called in by Pusey.

Pusey's decision to summon the police, and his overall handling of student activism in the 1960s, cast a shadow of doubt over the administration's overall ability to effectively manage the campus.

Much of the anger was directed at the Corporation, Harvard's secretive primary governing board, which was widely perceived as out of touch with student concerns. Feelings had grown so sour, one former official remembers, that the Corporation delegated much of its responsibility to the Board of Overseers, a secondary governing board elected by alumni.

"Partly because of the problems Harvard had with disturbances, I think the overseers had a little more to say than usual," says C. Douglas Dillon '31, who was president of the overseers in 1970. "The Corporation was having difficulties--the students were mad at them--so they suddenly turned to the Board of Overseers and said, 'You're the senior board," which we hadn't known before."

Mistrust

All this mistrust led those responsible for appointing the new president to find someone whom students would trust--someone who would have some sense of legitimacy on campus. And that led them to Bok, who as dean of the Law School was already popular with students.

"We were looking for someone who knew the University, and particularly the College, who could handle the obvious pressure that had arisen in the couple of years prior to that," says Dillon.

'Lawyer-Like Mediation'

As his associates tell it, Bok's lawyer-like mediation skills, combined with the post-war tranquility, allowed him to meet those expectations. Administrators say that unlike his predecessor, Bok has usually proved willing to hear--if not listen to--what protestors said.

Where Bok really made a difference, colleagues say, was in his restructuring of the University's administration. Bok streamlined the antiquated systems used by Pusey, establishing several new vice presidencies to delegate responsibilities. Bok then put Harvard's stocks under the charge of the Harvard Management Corporation in 1973, and created the Development Office to coordinate and intensify fundraising efforts.

With his new administrative structures in place, Bok could work on expanding the University's financial coffers and physical plant. And the resulting stability allowed Bok to work on educational reforms, as well.

Thus, Bok established innovative educational programs at the College and the Medical School, and created the Kennedy School of Government from a few faculty offices in Littauer.

Bok also tinkered with undergraduate education, putting his weight behind then-Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky's proposal for the creation of a Core Curriculum. Rosovsky credits Bok for marshalling faculty support behind the measure, even though there was considerable opposition to the plan initially.

"Without his help we probably would not have managed," Rosovsky says.

But even the new administrative structures could not save Bok from having to face tough pressure from activists.

When the University's staff employees wanted to unionize under the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW), Bok tried but failed to squelch the movement.

Divestment

And the divestment issue, a perennial thorn in Bok's side, also proved resilient, despite Bok's careful administrative analysis of the issue.

Over the years, Bok wrote at least six lengthy essays considering the University's stance on divestment, since the issue has been raised often. But while both sides of the debate were happy he dealt with the issue, neither was completely satisfied with the issue once and for all.

But if there was one sphere in which Bok's administrative apparatus proved especially controversial, it was his role in several highly-contested tenure decisions. Several times, Bok denied lifetime professorships to candidates popular with students and sometimes with the backing of their departments.

Some professors praise Bok's system of reading tenure candidates' work carefully, and then referring their cases to special ad hoc committees. These professors say that Bok's final decisions are relatively free of bias, even though they may be unpopular.

"Although it's frustrating for people who think they've already reached the right conclusions, it means Harvard is not subject to governance by whim," says Thomas O'Brien, who was a vice president when Bok took his post.

Yet the ad hoc committees have produced some extremely unpopular decisions, and critics have charged that they merely exist to maintain the status quo, which is slanted against junior faculty.

But most agree that compared to his predecessor, Bok's leadership style did much more to foster an atmosphere of communication as opposed to confrontation.

This article was first published in June 1990, when President Derek C. Bok announced he would step down this spring.