Bok Set to Review Fundraisers At the 9 University Faculties

When President Bok returned from Florida earlier this month, he found eight letters on his desk. The contents, according to Bok, did not include any stunning revelations or undiscovered scandals.

But the letters from the deans of eight of Harvard's nine faculties are the most recent chapter in a University-wide reassessment of fundraising practices. Bok ordered the deans to review those procedures last November in the wake of embarassing disclosures about the Kennedy School of Government's fundraising.

Bok says that the internal reviews of the faculties discovered no major improprieties or evidence of wrongdoing. But the president is still waiting for the results of the Kennedy School's internal probe, which may provide more interesting reading.

In an open letter to the deans last November, Bok charged them with "assess[ing] whether any of [their fundraising] practices impinge or would appear to impinge upon the academic independence of Harvard." So far, both Bok and officials at the faculties say the academic independence of Harvard has not been tarnished by the University's extensive network of fundraisers.

But Bok's request came in response to a well-publicized scandal at the Kennedy School, when Dean Graham T. Allison '62 approved a draft agreement that would have granted "officer of the University" status to a Texas couple in exchange for a $500,000 donation. In 1985, the same couple were made lecturers in psychology months after they gave $150,000 to the Erik Erikson Center, an interdisciplinary research center that is part of Harvard-affiliated Cambridge Hospital.

Bok says he is willing to wait for those two institutions to complete their fundraising probes. "I have had extensive conversations with both these offices, and have told them why we found problems with their practices," says Bok. "They are alert to those problems and are unlikely to repeat them, so I don't feel that I'm working under the gun."

Although Bok requested the internal fundraising reviews to be completed by the end of January, he says he is willing to give extensions on that deadline. In addition to the Kennedy School and Erikson Center results, Bok can look forward to reading an in-depth fundraising review of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS).

Officials at the late-complying faculties will make no projections about their findings, except to say the extra time is necessary to insure a complete report. "What I'm hoping to do is to get it right and to get it done," says Richard Cavanagh, executive dean of the Kennedy School who is in charge of the review. He says he will complete a preliminary report for Allison in the next few weeks.

The fundraising review process is more complicated at FAS, where officials say the complexity of the $22 million a year operation requires special attention. Dean of Faculty A. Michael Spence says that the development officers responsible for FAS's fundraising will review their own procedures this spring as part of the more thorough FAS inquiry. Spence submitted a preliminary letter to Bok last month that presented a plan for the long-range review.

"It would be impossible for one person to look at every last gift," says FAS Administrative Dean Robert A. Rotner, who is in charge of the FAS review. He says the final report will be submitted by April 1.

Bok, of course, will have the final word on the state of Harvard's fundraising practices. He says a "discussion paper" will result this summer from a series of meetings on fundraising with the deans. The paper will contain guidelines based on the results of the faculty reviews and Bok's own experience as a fundraiser, he says.

But the president will not say if the results of the nine faculty reviews will ever be made public. And Bok isn't known for sharing his mail.