Money Can't Buy Us Change

In 1886, on the occasion of Harvard's 250th anniversary, Charles William Eliot, the University's greatest president, painted an optimistic picture of its future. "Universities are among the most permanent of human institutions," Eliot said. "They outlast particular forms of government, and even the legal and industrial institutions in which they seem to be embedded. Harvard University already illustrates this transcendent vitality."

In more ways than one, Eliot's words were prescient. Thanks largely to his contributions, the 20th century has seen Harvard solidify its reputation as America's leading institution of higher learning, by virtually every measure. Year after year, Harvard students win more Rhodes Scholarships and its faculty garner more Nobel Prizes than any other university in the world.

The genius of Charles William Eliot lay in his recognition of the fact that a university does not remain great by standing still. Eliot embraced change, reform and experimentation. Against significant opposition from faculty, overseers and alumni, he transformed Harvard from a small, northeastern college into a national university by courageously adding and expanding graduate schools, enlarging the student body, recruiting faculty, broadening course offerings and liberating students from a strict set of course requirements. As Richard Norton Smith explains in his book, The Harvard Century, "For those in search of a pattern, there was [Eliot's] bold assertion that an open mind, trained to skeptical investigation, was preferable to complacency of any kind."

More than eight and a half decades after Eliot stepped down from Harvard's helm, the University stands as a testament to his vision. And yet, as Harvard approaches a new century, we fear that its leaders have forgotten Eliot's most important lesson: that change is often healthy.

Today, in Tercentenary Theatre, one of Eliot's greatest admirers is likely to echo his role model's message about universities as enduring institutions. And yet, in his annual address to parents, graduates and alumni, President Neil L. Rudenstine is likely to sound a cautionary note-to stress that we are now embarking on The Period That Will Make or Break Harvard's Future.

It was not quite a month ago, on May 13, that Rudenstine played up the same theme as he officially launched the largest fundraising drive in the history of higher education. Then he said that the University was "in a time of scarce resources," and that the finding new sources of revenue would "not to easy." And while it may have struck some as a bit ironic to hear the guardian of a $6 billion fortune described those resources as "scarce," Rudenstine had an important larger point: Harvard, nearing the year 2000 with a new crew of t op administrators, is at a crossroads. With more than a century of virtually uninterrupted expansion behind it, the University has now adopted an internal focus, aimed at strengthening and integrating its far-flung components.

Though precedented, The University Campaign--a five-year effort aimed at raising nearly $2.1 billion--will almost certainly succeed, and even surpass expectations for its success. Even before it was announced, the campaign had accumulated a nucleus fund of just over $652n million, more than a quarter of its target. In all likelihood, a healthy infusion of cash will keep the $6 billion coffers of the world's wealthiest university brimming. And that is good.

But The Period That Will Make or Break Harvard's Future is about more than money. Harvard's problem has rarely been a lack of resources. Rather, it has been a lack of willingness to use those resources in the best possible way.

Indeed, it would almost be fair to say that Harvard in recent years has been plagued by an overabundance of money. The University has so much that it rarely has to worry where the next dollar is going to come from. As a result, faculty and administrators are insulated from their constituents--Harvard's students. When undergraduates make suggestions, register complaints or demand action, they often listen politely, offer encouraging words and then do little. Occasionally, they abandon any pretense of regard for student cocerns, ignoring requests or quashing them with a vote of the Faculty. More often, they dawdle around until students' four-year Cambridge life spans expire, secure in the knowledge that they will outlast each crop of student activists. As the apocryphal story goes, former Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky once told striking students, "You will be here for four years, I will be here for the rest of my life, Harvard will be here forever." Sometimes we wonder who is more anxious for Commencement--the graduates, or their teachers.

This attitude was evident most recently at a meeting of the Faculty Council, just three weeks ago. There, the assembled professors were scheduled to discuss a student proposal to reform the academic calendar.

The proposal--which would have moved fall semester exams back to early December and shortened reading period--had been a long time coming. It was debated extensively by the Undergraduate Council, and then by the Committee on Undergraduate Education, both of which endorsed it. It clearly reflected the desire of a majority of students to extend the winter vacation and salvage it from the stress to exam preparation.

And it took the Faculty Council all of a few minutes to shoot the idea down--with virtually no debate. As Faculty Council member and sociology professor Theda Skocpol said," [The proposal] went over like a lead balloon."

More galling even than the brusque, insensitive manner in which the calendar reform proposal was killed was the arrogant, self-serving Faculty logic underlying the move. Explained Dean for Undergraduate Education Lawrence Buell, "The Faculty Council seemed to feel that any major change in the status quo should not be entered into without a clear-cut advantage presenting itself in the proposed new arrangement."

Advantage, for whom? The Faculty, of course. "The faculty who spoke acknowledged that the proposed change would logically look more attractive to students than to faculty," Buell said. "But in their judgment, creating a full winter break for students would either deny or curtail their own vacations."

The proposed calendar "seemed uncomfortable for professors," said Assistant Professor of the Classic Cynthia Damon. After all, as Skocpol noted, "We all have quality of life issues to think about."

Calendar reform is the most recent, but by no means the only issue on which students have expressed concerns that were either brushed aside or utterly ignored by professors and administrators. On other matters of consequence either to the University as a whole, or merely to individual constituencies, the new administration has refused to change long-held policies.

Take, for example, President Rudenstine's re-appointment early last month, of Dunster House Co-Masters Karel and Hetty Liem to a two-year term. The Liems, of course, are the proud dictators of a strife-torn realm. Two years ago, they refused to rehire a non-resident tutor who expressed views they found disagreeable. And for some time, they allowed--even condoned--the behavior of a resident tutor who allegedly threatened and intimidated students and colleagues and practiced flagrant nepotism.

In short, they did everything house masters should not do, and prompted outrage among many of Dunster's residents. But they were rehired anyway, without even so much as an acknowledgment of student concerns.

Or take student concern about Harvard's Expository Writing program. Proclaimed an integral and vital part of each undergraduate's education, Expos was, until recently, a department in turmoil--the victim of an intolerant and short-tempered director, Richard C. Marius, who verbally abused students and teachers on a regular basis.

Marius resigned earlier this year after a Crimson investigation revealed widespread dissatisfaction with his leadership style among department members. In response, the University hired his longtime assistant, Nancy Sommers, to replace him, after a brief sham of a search for a successor that initially featured a two-week deadline for applications and virtually no advertisements for the job.

Sommers is certainly a qualified administrator and instructor. But after all the havoc wreaked by Marius, students deserved a real search for the best possible successor.

When it doesn't outright ignore, Harvard postpones. The most flagrant example is the University's inaction on the continuing Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) controversy.

For years, professors and administrators have promised to take action to demonstrate Harvard's opposition to the military's ban on homosexuals. In 1990, they declared the gay ban inconsistent with Harvard's own non-discrimination policy. As a sign of their dismay, they vowed to sever all ties with ROTC within two years if the gay ban remained in place.

That was four years ago. Harvard still has ties to ROTC; the military is still dismissing homosexual soldiers. Students, by and large, continue to be outraged. The University, meanwhile, is still studying its response. Today, some of the most vocal campus advocates for breaking Harvard's relationship with the ROTC program will receive their diplomas.

There are other issues, other areas where Harvard administrators insist on maintaining policies that are not in the best interests of students or the University. In each case--either out of ignorance, or arrogance, or simply for comfort's sake--Harvard refuses to change.

If Harvard is to maintain its status as the nation's preeminent institution of higher learning, this is no way to proceed. If the University is to advance, it must be willing to experiment--it must stay in touch with the students who are is lifeblood. Simply standing by the status quo--whether it be on issues of calendar reform, faculty appointments, ROTC or anything else--will not work.

Charles William Eliot recognized this truth more than a hundred years ago. Were he standing in Tercentenary Theatre today, he would, no doubt, be enormously pleased with how far Harvard has advanced since then. But he would also be dismayed that a university that has come so far in just a single century has become so entrenched in its habits that it refuses to question them, thereby risking obsolescence.

Eliot knew that Harvard must learn to embrace reform. And not even all the money in the world can change that.