List of 69 for Presidency Proves Confusing

Harvard faculty and students are reacting with a mixture of approval and disappointment, but, most of all, confusion to a list of 69 official and relatively final candidates for the Harvard presidency.

The list, the first comprehensive compilation of remaining contenders, began circulating among select faculty and student groups two weeks ago, after the Corporation gave copies to members of the Faculty Council and University Committee on Governance Nov. 9.

( The list is reprinted in full on page 3 )

While the 69 names include several persons whom the Corporation has not had time to check completely, Francis H. Burr '35, Senior Fellow of the Corporation, said the opportunity of adding names was still open, but chances were very slim.

The Corporation must still cut down the number of persons under consideration to less than 15 before it will "go underground" to make its final decision, according to Burr. It may have already narrowed the field to less than 30 in anticipation of the twice-a-year Board of Overseers meeting being held in Cambridge this weekend. But there is no chance the final decision will be announced by Thanksgiving, as many had expected, Burr said, and less than a 50-50 chance of an announcement before Christmas vacation begins Dec. 18.

"I'd say we've moved from cold to warm, but I wouldn't say we're hot," John M. Blum '43, a junior Fellow on the Corporation, said last Sunday. Burr called the compilation of the list a step to the "second plateau."

"Up to now, we've been looking at the list with an eye toward whom we can check off," added Albert L. Nickerson '33, another Fellow. "I think we can now start looking again at the positive aspects of the people who are still on the list. We don't expect to get a man who has all the qualifications we're looking for, but we do want the man who will be able to find people who can handle things where he is weak or at least a man who is conscious of his own weakness there," he added.

Pared down from an initial stack of over 900 nominations, the list still includes between 20 and 30 names of persons who are completely unknown to most members of the Harvard community. As a result, most faculty members are taking it more as a guideline for interpreting the spectrum of candidates and intentions of the Corporation rather than a "serious" list of finalists.

Early in the Fall, the Corporation emphatically stated its desire for a man with "a primary academic commitment." Only four of the 69 men-H. Gardner Ackley, U.S. Ambassador to Italy, George P. Shultz, director of the Bureau of Management, David E. Bell, executive vice-president of the Ford Foundation and former head of the Agency for International Development, and Lewis Branscomb, director of the National Bureau of Standards-are not presently working in a university or university related projects. Although all four have strong ties to academia, some have already been dropped from the list and the others are on their way off.

Approximately one-third of the men are members of one of the nine Harvard Faculties. Some deans are being seriously considered; others appear on the list simply as members of the unofficial Queen's Honor Roll. But nearly all major ones remain-Dunlop, May, Bok, Ebert, Fouraker, Sizer, Peterson, Brooks.

A look at the candidates' academic backgrounds yields some interesting general information. While nearly half of the men Harvardconsiders qualified for the presidency have taught here (34), a significantly smaller number were educated in the College (9).

EIGHTEEN of the candidates are associated with West Coast universities. Outside of Harvard, the largest number come form Stanford (7), Chicago and Berkeley (4 apiece), N.Y.U. (3), and other Ivy schools combined (5). One explanation of the predominance of the West Coast names is the distance and inaccessibility of reliable interviewing on the qualification of candidates.

East Coast candidates, particularly in Ivy schools, are better known among their Harvard colleagues, and in the present democratic "shoot 'em down" consultations, less likely to survive. Ironically, names associated with Eastern universities are therefore more likely to be the strongest candidates.

Broken down by academic fields (in those cases where information was available), the greatest number of candidates are in the natural sciences (28)-including six medical doctors. Social Scientists comprise 26 members of the group, and only six are professors in the Humanities.

Roger Rosenblatt '29, acting master of Dunster House, is both the youngest person on the list and the only one who has not held at least a full professorship. One might say, without a great deal of risk or qualification, he doesn't have a chance.

After releasing its list two weeks ago, the Corporation began to blitz Harvard Houses and hold a second round of meetings with interested student, faculty and alumni groups. One incredulous senior faculty member could not understand why the Corporation had visited him three times seeking advice on possible candidates. When he asked a colleague whether he was supposed to know all these candidates, the man replied, "You don't have to know any, you are one."

In early October, the Corporation met with all elected student members of Faculty committees, representatives of the Graduate Students Association and diverse student groups in other graduate schools. Only the graduate students remained actively interested in the search, however. Disappointed over the apathetic response in the college, the Corporation decided to split up and hold dinner meetings in both Harvard and Radcliffe houses.

"Maybe we made a mild miscalculation," Burr admitted. "I thought there would be more student groups that would put themselves together. But the reaction we've gotten has been both friendly and helpful. I was in college myself at the time Conant was chosen. I remember I was deeply and completely uninterested."

The name of former Attorney General Ramsey Clark has been mentioned in almost all student meetings with Corporation members. When Lowell House students asked why his name was not being considered, Burr reiterated the Corporation's intention to find a man with "scholarly accomplishments." (Clark has no teaching experience and went through college, law school, and a master's program in history in three years.)

Burr's response, confirmed by other Corporation members in separate House meetings ("The problem is no one respects Nate as a scholar," one Fellow said) narrows the earlier and broader Corporation search to one for a man "with a primary academic commitment." It also contains the key for separating some mere notables from serious contenders in the maze of 69 names.

THE master list is heavily weighted toward college administrators, primarily because the two most pressing problems facing the new president will be fund-raising and a bureaucratic re-organization of the president's office. "Most medium size high schools have a bigger staff than the Harvard administration," Burr has commented on several occasions. Both Princeton and Yale, comparatively smaller Ivy schools, have larger administrative staffs, and the Corporation would like to pattern its new arrangement after theirs, with clearly defined areas of concern and authority among major Massachusetts Hall administrators.

On at least one occasion, Burr has told a group of students and faculty the next president will need at least the experience of being a department chairman. Over 20 candidates have been department chairman; 9 are presently college presidents; 11 are deans; 5 are university chancellors or provosts; another 5 are vice-presidents; and 14 are directors of institutes or university-related projects.

Among these men, however, there are some who are not strictly considered scholars, and, unless there is a strong overriding reason for keeping them, they are not likely to remain on the list when it is again reduced next week. Three university presidents, for instance-Friday, Gilman, and Hester-have been administrators almost exclusively for the last ten years. John Oswald, vice-president of the University of California, may have been a distinguished scholar inplant pathology when he was chairman of his department in the fifties, but that kind of scholarship would not evoke any widespread sympathy.

The call for a man of scholarship came unanimously from members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which is by far the largest and most influential constituency which the Corporation must deal within the search. The reaction of the Faculty to the present list, however, has ranged from unenthusiastic approval to boredom to mild outrage.

THE Corporation's accessibility has elicited the unanimous approval of the Faculty, but the first results of their nine month search have not wowed anyone.

"Now that I look over this rather squalid list," one faculty liberal noted, "I think we may have overemphasized the need for a pure academic. In the Spring we were so afraid of getting a general or a corporation executive, I guess we distrusted the Wall Street-Ropes and Gray influence too much. There are some who wonder if the need for an academic ought to be reconsidered," he added.

"You want a rip-snorter in the presidency. The place needs to be galvanized, and we've had enough theologians," he said.

Another professor questioned whether the process of widespread consultation might have limited the Corporation to a homogenous group of candidates, many of whom made it to the finals because they were not charismatic enough to make enemies. "They should have kept a tighter circle of advisors," he said. "In their search for credibility, the Corporation overextended itself; and if you look hard enough, you're bound to find someone to shoot the man down."

Last week, Burr defended the process, claiming that the Corporation has tried to balance its interviewing and adding that the alternative, more intensive short interviews with potential candidates, would be far worse.

"There is a tremendous tendency to overemphasize short interviews with candidates. You can't really learn that much about the person-not as much as you can if you call someone you know well at his university and say 'what about this guy?'"

Most of the strident objections to the Corporation's list come from former members of the new defunct Faculty liberal caucus, and their objections have a great deal of substance.

After a bitter battle between the former conservative (or moderate) and liberal caucuses two years ago, most of the central issues and much of the personal antagonism between caucus members had seemingly subsided this Fall. "While the residue of the caucuses is still around, and the residue of the paranoia's around, the University seems to be coming around to a united position," one dean remarked.

A LOOK at the Corporation's master list, however, especially those from within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, displays a systematic omission of anyone who has even brushed close to the liberals in the last year. At the same time, the list bristles with formerly active members of the conservative group: Bailyn, Dunlop, Heimert, May, Rosovsky, and Wilson. H. Stuart Hughes, Paul Doty, Edwin Reischauer, and Roger Rosenblatt-four other, essentially non-caucus Faculty politicians, have gradually moved to the conservative side of one of the major caucus disagreements-the political neutrality of the University-as they became more involved in Faculty politics. None have ever gotten deeply into the Faculty infighting, but still they remain suspect in the eyes of liberals.

Prominent Faculty liberals, Jerome Bruner, professor of Psychology, or Stanley Hoffman, professor of Government, for instance, stand out because of their omission from the list; especially when it is so broad as to include some "courtesy candidates."

"I think the list has a corroborative value," one of the liberals commented, "it shows that the Faculty is still polarized and maybe we do need someone who knows us well and is quite apart from us, perhaps from the graduate schools. That way you will have a honeymoon period for the new man."

"You've got to keep your eye on the house end of the list because it's the place where you can tell what the intentions of the Corporation are," another liberal leader remarked cryptically. "The point is not that you want a caucus leader, but you have to define by example what you want. In a list of 69 names, one would expect some additional names that aren't there."

Some say the liberals view is paranoiac, but it's widely shared by many students who have waited quietly through the Fall fearing the worst. If the Faculty votes of last year are any indication, the liberals are a minority of one-third of the Faculty, and totally without a representative in the administration. But they are an important one-third with some leverage if the Corporation plans to stick to its pledge not to alienate large constituencies with its choice.

Right now there are many inside names on the list that liberals would find acceptable, but few they whole heartedly endorse. Some of these Faculty members have already held meeting with the Corporation to explain their disappointment with the list, but at this point there are not that many viable alternatives to it.

While the Faculty now haggles over the 69 names, President Pusey has shown little or no interest in participating in the search proceedings. Early last Spring, he told Corporation members he did not want to be intimately or even peripherally involved in choosing his successor. Consequently, the Corporation has been meeting separately as the Fellows of Harvard College the night before regular Corporation meetings and has given only informal reports on the state of the hunt.

Addressing the University Committee on Governance last Monday, however, Pusey did receive one direct question on the presidential sweepstakes. "Mr. Pusey, can you give us the single most necessary qualification for the new president?" one of the members asked.

"A belief in God," the President answered after a short pause.