Driving Over Divisions

When President Neil L. Rudenstine took office in 1991, the first thing he did was hit the brakes.

In the late 1980s, former President Derek C. Bok and former Dean of the Faculty A. Michael Spence had plotted an all-out drag race of a capital campaign, with an almost apocalyptic goal of $3.6 billion.

The Bok campaign, which included a $2 billion goal just for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, would have been more than twice as big as any fund drive in the history of the higher education.

Rudenstine, however, wanted a more carefully choreographed plan that meshed with his vision of an integrated University that exalted cooperation.

So he delayed the fund drive and launched a two-year planning effort involving administrators across the University.

The president attracted some criticism, but no one could fault his thoroughness. Deans met and learned about parts of Harvard they never knew existed. Vice Presidents and other officials were away for planning retreats.

"The people at the top are concerned not only with their own goal," says Dean of the School of Education Jerome T. Murphy, "but with the other subparts as well."

All told, Rudenstine says he put together 70 different events to talk about co-operation.

"The planning was coordinated on a number of levels because of the president's review," says Vice President for Alumni and Development Fred L. Glimp '50. "First each dean came up with an academic plan, followed by a financial plan and finally a fundraising plan."

Last months, Rudenstine officially kicked off his version of the campaign. It has less horse power than the flashy plan proposed by Bok, but its goal--$2.1 billion--is still the larger in the history of higher education.

For students of the University, the campaign offers insight about how the different parts of Harvard will cooperate in the near future.

The campaign is useful primarily as a symbol; what the University absolutely must do for its long-term health, officials say, is to turn Harvard's separate financial structures into a single, fiscal behemoth.

"The campaign won't be the reason for great unification," Glimb says. "It will be the financial structure of the future that will make us do more with the same."

The campaign also highlights the limitations of bringing Harvard closer together. For all of Rudenstine's planning, his University Campaign is not so much one fundraiser as it is several drives.

So while the president has dropped the campaign goal and slowed the pace, he still does not have the money engines of harvard's ten faculties roaring to gether.

Even the fund drive's top leadership isdecentralized. The University Campaign has threenational co-chairs L. Richard L. Menshel, WilliamF. Thompson '50 and Robert G. Stone Jr. '45, amember of the Harvard Corporation.

Of the $2.1 billion scheduled to be raised,about $1 billion will go towards buildingendowments of the various graduate schools.Approximately one-third of the remaining moneywill be used to meet capital needs and the othertwo-thirds will be devoted to current uses.

Stone is, after Rudenstine, the most importantofficial in the campaign. They share a similarvision of a unified movement to, in Stone's words,"bring Harvard into the next century." Stone ranthe University's last big fundraiser, a $350million effort that lasted throughout the early1980s.

But despite the shared vision of Stone and thepresident, some aspects of the campaign betray alack of coordination.

The process of integration is complicated bythe varying degrees of fundraising experienceamong financial officials at each of the ninegraduate schools. For some schools, it is thefirst time they have actually held a capitalcampaign.

Harvard has been building a base of funds tostart the campaign for about three years. Butdifferent schools began their find drives atdifferent times.

"Different schools have different amounts offundraising complete," says Menshel, one of thethree national co-chairs. "The School of PublicHealth started earlier so it had a high amountdone, whereas the Business School's is startinglater and therefore does not have as muchcomplete."

In a particularly noteworthy sign of theabsence of unity, the starting time for thecampaign of the high profile Law School is nearlythree years out of whack with the rest of thedrives. The Law School didn't even wait for therest of the University to kick off its effort.

Instead, the school, which had been ready to gowith the proposed Bok Campaign, officially startedits $150 million drive in 1991.

As a result, only $45 million--the amountremaining to be raised when Harvard officiallystarted the drive last month--will be creditedtowards the campaign.

The school is trying to keep up appearances ofunity, however. Spokesperson Michael Chmura saysall donors to the Law School drive will have theirnames included as contributors to the UniversityCampaign.

Coordination between the different campaigns ismade more difficult by the fact that each graduateschool has its own fundraising committee.

But there is also an overall campaign committeewith about 35 members who are ultimatelyresponsible for the entire fund drive, Glimp says.

This campaign committee is in charge ofcoordinating various fundraising requests, butexactly what that entails is unclear.

Some suggest the committee's main role is toprevent different schools from courting the samedonors, while other officials say the group plotsstrategies for how to approach the mega-rich.

"Coordination of donors is too strong a word,"says Harvey V. Fineberg '67, dean of the School ofpublic Health. "But around major donors we want tocompare strategies."

Glimp says the committee has more of aneducational function. "We can try to concentratedonors on our highest priorities, while making ourcase case in a cordinated way, "he says.

Glimp is careful to say that total unity isneither possible nor desirable.

"There's no great virtue in pulling togetherper se," the vice president says. "FAS isfull of decentralized management centers...economizing makes that necessary."

Despite the committee's efforts, officialsacknowledge that there is no clear mechanism toensure coordination. And it is the success of theindividual schools, not the University as a whole,that preoccupies those involved in the campaigneffort.

President's Fund

The schools will be able to share only thosefunds which are given to the President'sUniversity Funds, which Harvard has billed as thecenterpiece of the campaign.

In the past, each school has been left to raisefunds for itself. And that often meant thathigh-profile schools like Law and Businessprospered while those with a less prosperousalumni base, such as Divinity, Education andPublic Health, suffered.

For example, while the Business School hasregularly updated its facilities, Fineberg, thepublic health dean, says his school has not addeda new building in decades.

Rudenstine hopes this new fund will consist ofabout $235 million in "unrestricted central moneyto help fund ventures."

The president would then have the discretion todisburse dollars to poorer schools and needyprojects.

At first blush, the President's Fund appears tobe most representative of Rudenstine's goal of aunified fund drive. But campaign officials haveyet to develop any well-defined structure or planfor raising the President's Fund.

The University has said it is relying on"interested alumni" for these donations. But witheach of Harvard's schools focused on theirindividual campaign goals, there is littleincentive for a fundraiser to encourage donationsto the central fund over gifts to the school wherehe or she works.

Coordination?

Despite all the noble talk about visions for acooperative future, the adminisration's newemphasis on inter-Faculty cooperation is drivenmore by financial concerns than anything else.

"Harvard, like everybody else, is in a time ofscarce resources," Rudenstine says. "To make themost of what we have, we have to join togetheracross schools."

The idea of building bridges across differentparts of the University is hardly new. Forexample, the seven-year-old Program in Ethics andthe Professions, which was started by Bok, issupported by money from various schools andsources.

The campaign is raising money to supportsimilar programs in the environment, publichealth, schooling and children, and a categoryofficials vaguely call "mind, brain and behavior."

While the University encourages suchcooperation between disciplines, Harvard has donelittle to discourage duplication of experts indifferent fields. And that fact is puzzling tosome observers of the University.

"It seems you have economics everywhere," saysa professor at another university who spoke oncondition of anonymity. "I don't understand howthey're divided. There are some at the BusinessSchool, some at the Kennedy School, some in theeconomics [department] and it seems like there areeven some others around."

B-school

Of all the University's many parts, theBusiness School may best represent the internalcontradictions of the capital campaign.

The dean there, John H. McArthur, says hisschool won't have to step up its usual fundraisingefforts to meet a $220 million goal, the largestof any graduate school. The school has no capitalneeds, and the fund drive goal represents whatwould be raised "if we go to sleep," McArthursays.

At the same time, however, the Business Schoolis the only piece of the University activelydiverting its alumni resources to help out itspoorer companions.

Fund drives at the Divinity School, GraduateSchool of Education and School of Public Healthare all being led by Business Schoolalumni--Ernest E. Monard '51, John H. Hobbs '60and Menshel, respectively.

Campaign officials say the influence andconnections of the Business School alumni havebeen a boon for these smaller schools. The Schoolof Public Health, for example, has already raised$50 million of its $125 million goal, according toFineberg.

"The School of Public Health doesn't have a bigalumni donor base, so we hope to broaden thatbase." Menshel says. "So, far things are goingwell."

"The School of Education, which has the mostambitions goals relative to its normalfundraising, also appears to be meeting with earlysuccess.

"Things are going well," Murphy says. "We'rereaching out beyond our usual pool of donors totake advantage of new opportunities."

Murphy says a strong fund drive will allow theschool to offer better financial aid packages andto endow more chairs.

"For many of the smaller schools this is theirbest effort ever," Glimp says. "None of theschools has been off to a bad start."

The Ultimate Effect

Clearly, though, the glamour of the largestfund drive in the history of higher educationmasks some fundamental divisions that could hamperefforts to make the schools cooperate further.

Officials, including Rudenstine, caution theextra money from a successful fund drive does notnecessitate cooperation.

The campaign, they say, must not be seen as anend in itself but rather a first step towardsfurther integration of the University.

If it works, President Rudenstine may even geta chance to put his foot on the accelerator