From the Shelf

American university presidents are a strange breed. Stranger still are American university presidents-emeriti, a group that has variously found its way back to the classroom, into public office, into business, or back to the farm. Some presidents-emeriti become Experts on American Education and write reports, usually thanks to the Carnegie Foundation. Harold W. Dodds, President of Princeton University from 1933 to 1957, has accomplished the ultimate: he has come up with a report for the Carnegie Foundation on college presidents.

In The Academic President--Educator or Caretaker?, Dodds quickly decides that his former colleagues have become far too much of the latter and should devote 50 per cent of their time as the former. "Instead of devoting himself chiefly to secondary activities," says the former Princeton executive, "the president must preserve his educational leadership, [and] it must indeed be enhanced."

The Academic President suffers mainly from a lack of usefulness. Incumbent presidents have either experienced much of what Dodds describes or they are too hopeless to profit from his advice now. The layman will not find interesting vignettes or case studies about the intriguing and difficult task of running a university. And faculties already know everything there is to know about running a university. Strangely, trustees of educational institutions can profit most from Dodd's study. In addition to cogent advice on their own conduct and their relationship with the president, trustees will find new insights into the character of the college president. Also, presidential aspirants may find words of wisdom in this little handbook.

After reading the book's account of presidents at work and a former university president's advice to them, you cannot fail to understand why academic chief executives are no more than caretakers today. And, it seems, they shall continue to be that for years to come.

Dodds continually speaks of the threats to life and limb that await the college president on each side of his narrow path. The faculty wants an understanding academic, the governing board wants a realistic manager. The president must maintain communication and friendliness with students and faculty, but never try to run the place on charisma alone. He must visit all areas of his university but never create the impression of snooping, or suspecting, or by-passing.

This Scylla-and-Charybdis existence makes today's university president no more than a mechanistic functionary. All too frequently Dodds defines presidential success in terms of strengthening weak departments, meeting people and participating in civic affairs with a practical eye towards public relations, raising money to meet deficits, planning the budget, delegating the tedious tasks, hiring and firing diplomatically. Throughout The Academic President is a sense that the president's job is to remedy the bad spots, await the crises, and react to problems Even when the president plans the future, he does so as a device for making the proper decision when crises arise in the present.

Even Dodd's ideal president would be no more than a sterile operator, a caretaker. This indicates that the university president of the 1960's is not the man of ideas, not the adventurer, not the innovator (although Dodds mentions this part of the job parenthetically). Indeed, the accomplishments of Nathan Pusey's tenure, by no means unimpressive, are not startling new departures, but courageous and competent responses: the amazing repair of the Divinity School, the staunch defense of academic freedom when threatened by McCarthyism and the NDEA; holding the Ivy League together during trying times; launching and completing a gigantic capital funds drive when Harvard and higher education needed the shot in the arm: "building high" when urban crowdedness demanded it; alerting this university and others to the dangers of Federal aid; recognizing the new international character of the modern American university.

Here Pusey ranks high among his contemporaries. The university president of today is not the fireball innovator, the experimenter. This is true for three reasons.

The faculty has never relinquished its grasp on university government. Although never responsible for raising a university's funds, the faculty has never abdicated its right to spend the money. At a time when intellectuals magniloquently cry out for "excellence," faculties in American universities still insist upon a mediocre chief. Professors want their president to walk the line, to mind the store without interfering with their business.

Secondly, in the words of Dodds, "Since the governance of a college or university is characterized by an extra-ordinary emphasis upon consultation, an understanding head rarely says, 'I direct.' Rather, he says, 'I suggest' or 'I raise the question whether....'"

Finally, the increasing complexity of the twentieth-century university and the diversity of its problems have prohibited the president from experimenting or even from devoting attention to one area for a length of time sufficient to originate new ideas. To make ends meet, to keep the machine running smoothly is the extent of a university president's capabilities in a 24-hour day. The president oversees the whole show; the deans of the various schools effect the exciting changes.

The giants of yore are gone, now that the president has no time or inclination to develop a pet project that will make him remembered--like Woodrow Wilson's preceptorial system, Eliot's electives system, Lowell's House plan, Conant's General Education or Nieman Fellowships. Such ideas no longer come from the president's study.

An exception to this is Mary Bunting at Radcliffe, who is able to devise an Institute of Independent Study and an undergraduate House system simply because she is not burdened with the complex problems of a university president. In essence, Bunting is a dean.

Perhaps the trouble is in the nature of the beast. The academic president who emerges from Dodd's study is a very sterile being. He has functions and duties, not personality and ideas. And so the university president, straight-jacketed by his far-reaching responsibility and by constant faculty pressures, is colorless. Dodds talks only parenthetically about the joys of the office, about communicating with people, about activating ideas, about the myriad parts of the presidential personality and potential that fall under no specific "function." Dodds' president does not look forward to impending crises with gusto or glee; he does not seek to use his office or his power; he does not improve the strong, only patches up the weak. There is little wonder that such an academic president has little communication with the community he oversees.

Those who hold such executive positions know well that it is nearly impossible to see this when in office. Outsiders may talk of a more human or a more communicative person at the helm, but they do not at that time hold the responsibility of office. One wrapped up in administration inevitably becomes more mechanistic, more functionary.

Thus, Dodds can say, "It is not correct to attribute failure, or even second-class citizenship, to those who may lack the talents that make them well publicized personally but who operate quietly to improve the quality of their institutions. To lift a college from relative mediocrity to relative excellence is a notable achievement...Progress throughout all levels is inspired by emulation as well as by innovation."

It remains to wonder whether this can be consistent with what makes a successful university president: "The ability to project a personality that quickens a spiritual and intellectual thirst for excellence in one's colleagues."