Bok to the Future

As an alum who attended Harvard in the 1970s, I must confess to have gotten a chuckle from some of the descriptions of Derek Bok I’ve read over the past week. Ever since it was announced that Bok would return as interim president, he’s been heralded as a beloved and “universally trusted” figure, to cite one Crimson pullquote. Yet what I remember is that, in our day, we undergrads viewed him as a quintessential “suit”—a remote, conflict-averse administrator who many students might not have recognized if they bumped into him in the Yard. In Crimson editorials, we chided him for not pushing the Corporation to pull all Harvard investments from South Africa, for fighting with the support staff union over their pay, and for wanting to retain “flexibility” (which we assumed meant traditional exclusivity) when it came to affirmative action. In a bid to recreate some of the drama of the 1960’s sit-ins, a group of students tried to confront Bok at Massachusetts Hall over the university’s decision not to divest immediately from South Africa. Instead of meeting with them, Bok quietly decamped to spend the day working in Dana Palmer House. A few days later, the Crimson published an Animal Farm-like allegory about the incident that labeled the president “Derek the Duck.”

Looking back at Bok three decades later, however, I see him very differently. In the first news accounts of his return to Mass. Hall, I was amazed to read that he’s only 75 years old. It was a reminder of how young he was—just 41—when he became president in 1971. If you think Harvard is in “crisis” now, it was nothing compared to the mess Bok inherited: a university divided, bitter and exhausted by battles over the Vietnam war, including the infamous decision by his predecessor, Nathan M. Pusey ’28, to call the cops into the Yard when students occupied University Hall. By the time my class arrived on campus in 1975, Bok’s calm and deliberate style had already soothed the waters. Although he may not have done it fast enough for our impatient tastes, he eventually got the university on the right side of the divestiture issue (embracing the “Sullivan principles”), undergraduate education (rolling out the Core Curriculum), and affirmative action (on which he later co-authored a wise and supportive book, “The Shape of the River”). He tripled the endowment, built the Kennedy School, and made Harvard more international than ever, in complexion and outlook. And by cutting such an inoffensive, middle-of-the road profile, he helped encourage a culture of intellectual and political diversity that not only served a wide spectrum of students but meant that Harvard’s influence in the world of ideas and policy did not end as the heyday of JFK liberalism gave way to the conservative Reagan era.

They say that anyone can be a success in a job if they can choose their predecessor. In Bok’s case, his successors have made him look better and better in hindsight. Neil Rudenstine is a very kind and courtly man who will be remembered for his prodigious fundraising and support for African-American studies, but who often appeared overwhelmed by the job of running Harvard. (After Rudenstine suffered what looked like a nervous breakdown and took a leave four years into his tenure, Newsweek put him on the cover with the line “Exhausted.”) Larry Summers has a brilliant mind and bold, forward-looking ideas for Harvard, but, to my mind, suffered from a leadership flaw that was much more serious than not being able to keep his shirts tucked in or his penchant for sounding offensive when he means to be provocative. Whether you like Summers or not (and I do, from my limited encounters with him), he always seemed to be making himself the story. Sometimes it was deliberate, as with the hiring of Tony Blair’s former press spokeswoman and ostentatious displays of his speeches on Harvard’s official website. But more often it seemed to be unconscious, like the people we all know who keep getting into embarrassing scrapes until you eventually realize that it’s their way of making themselves the center of attention. With Bok, by contrast, you always knew that the institution came first. People may have thought of him as dull, but my guess is that he never minded that as long as Harvard seemed exciting. I don’t think it’s any accident, for instance, that when he retired his name was given to a low-key but much-needed program devoted to making Harvard professors better teachers: the Derek Bok Center.

Does Bok’s return as a short-termer mean that all the reforms Summers initiated will now be put on hold? I don’t see why that should be the case. From what I can tell (mostly from reading The Crimson and talking to my old professors and current undergrads), there’s more consensus around what needs to be done than all the headlines about Harvard In Turmoil would suggest. If Bok can capitalize on his reservoir of personal good will with the faculty and deep knowledge of academic governance to make everyone feel consulted, I think he can take the best of what Summers started—curriculum reform, wider financial aid, more support for international study, and expansion to Allston—and keep it moving in a way that won’t have to be revisited by his permanent replacement. (On Allston, placing the new Harvard Stem Cell Insitute on Western Ave. and tapping an avant-garde German architect to design it seems like an excellent start. Both faculty and students will be a lot more excited about moving to the other side of the Charles if it looks visually stunning and becomes a hub of cutting-edge research.) At the same time, I personally hope that things don’t quiet down entirely. Both as a journalist and as a graduate, I love the fact that Cambridge is forever bubbling with some sort of controversy, and protest over something or other. At times by its actions, at others by inaction, Harvard exudes a confidence that students and faculty who are allowed to make waves there are more likely to make a difference in the world beyond. Sitting thirty years ago in his remote outpost in the Yard, I suspect, Derek Bok understood that. I hope the man or woman the Corporation chooses to take over for him does too.

A former Crimed, Mark T. Whitaker ’79 is Editor of Newsweek