Send Your Cards and Letters In: Harvard Seeks a New President

President Pusey has roughly 325 days left as the 24th President of Harvard University. The Harvard Corporation hopes to have his successor, the 25th President, selected by the first of next year.

That's not much time. But Francis Burr, Senior Fellow of the Corporation, denies that any list of potential candidates has yet been arrived at.

So, without any hard information to go on, wholly untrue rumors about who Harvard's next President will be are being batted around through these dog days of summer. No one really has any idea who it might be, which makes the game all the more fun.

Aurora Borealis

The Corporation has tried from the beginning to give the selection process a democratic aura. Early this year, after Pusey announced his retirement, 200,000 letters were mailed out to students, alumni, faculty, staff, and just about anyone else who might claim to have a stake in Harvard's future.

They were form letters, but skillfully prepared so as to appear personal notes from the Corporation itself. They asked each recipient to specify in person or writing whom he or she wanted to be President of Harvard. The search has so far yielded about 600 names.

The real decision, of course, will be made by the Corporation, in conjunction with the Board of Overseers. The traditional joint meeting of the two bodies to ratify the choice, in which the outgoing President acts as a messenger between the rooms in which each of the two meet, hints at a bygone Harvard.

According to Burr, the Corporation will feel that it has failed in its task if the man they finally select is not supported by a large majority of students and Faculty.

To that end, the Corporation has for some time been conducting interviews with key Faculty members as to their personal favorites. There have been perhaps one hundred interviews thus far, each at least an hour long, each with a Corporation member. Faculty have been asked what they think the new President should "be like" and then who the man himself should be.

Second Round

In the Fall, the Corporation will apparently have arrived at a list of semi-finalists, and will then conduct interviews with key students and student groups, again seeking their views. The final decision, the naming of the one man, will of course be unilateral and private.

Who might that man be? The Record American announced Eliot Richardson. Both Richardson and Harvard issued prompt denials. A member of the Corporation dismissed the story, recollecting that when the Record needed money during the depression, it would make up exciting stories and run off lots of hot extras.

The Corporation, if it is at all honest in saying that it wants a President with the majority support of students, would probably not choose Richardson any-way, because of his involvement with the Nixon Administration.

Such a policy might also rule out such prominent names as McGeorge Bundy or Cyrus Vance, both Johnson war advisors. John Gardner, head of the Urban Coalition, might be more acceptable to students, but might also be isolated from the Faculty in some of the ways that President Pusey has been.

Tam O'Shanter

Gardner and S. I. Hayakawa, the acting president of San Francisco State who is noted for his jaunty tam o'shanter and his strong reactions against student radicalism, have been the two most frequently suggested nominees in the letter poll. According to a story in the Boston Globe August 10, Hayakawa's popularity has disappointed several Harvard officials who are involved in the selection process.

"This shows the depth of disaffection of some of our alumni to what's been going on," one official said several weeks ago. "And it shows the real misunderstanding of the alumni for what Harvard needs in new leadership at this juncture."

The soundest conjecture has the Corporation selecting a man of intellectual distinction, with liberal polities, chosen from an academic community, preferably the Harvard community. Prominent names include Dean Derek C. Bok of the Law School, Dean Dunlop, Archibald Cox (though his role as negotiator with radicals might hurt more than help his image), Kart Kazin of the Institute for Advanced Studies, Henry Rosovsky, Edwin Reischauer, and Edward Purcell.

Andrea Doria

The currency of these names may reflect a desire on the part of both Corporation and Faculty to "save" the foundering University by more positively embodying the values of intellectual academic life in the person of a distinguished scholar/President.

The appointment of Professors Schlicter and Blum to the Corporation itself this year may both reflect this desire and give it further impetus. Thus the national figures most often discussed in the press as potential Presidents may finally be overlooked.

A crucial question for the Corporation will be whether to install a strong, outspoken leader like Yale's Kingman Brewster, or a more "corporate" figure. It is said that the last strongman President. Pusey's predecessor James L. Conant, was often at odds with the Corporation.

Another consideration will be the functional responsibilities of the new President. Will he be a fund-raiser, or primarily involved with the educational process itself? Or will the functions be in some way split between two men, one in a newly created post such as Chancellor?

Will the new president have a limited term of office, and will his tenure be subject to a review committee? More important, will any women be considered for the job?

Meanwhile, much energy has and will be used trying to convince students that they have an important voice and stake in who will run Harvard.