Bok Pledges Low Profile in Review

Harvard’s next interim president, Derek C. Bok, who oversaw the implementation of the current Core Curriculum during his first term as the University’s chief, said in an e-mail Friday that he will not impose his ideas for the curricular review on the Faculty.

Bok, who learned the weekend before last that he would be serving as interim president, wrote that he has “simply not had time enough to speak intelligently about curricular reform at Harvard.”

“I can assure you, however,” he added, “that I don’t believe an interim president should try to ‘impose’ curricular ideas on the Faculty even if I had the power to do so.”

The outgoing president, Lawrence H. Summers, stepped back from the review last spring after professors exerted pressure on him to reduce his involvement in Faculty affairs. Until last spring, Summers served as an ex officio member of the General Education committee, which is charged with reforming the Core.

Some Faculty members hope, however, that Bok will play an active role in curriculum reform.

“I sure hope he’ll restart a discussion on curriculum reform, and contribute to it,” Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology Steven Pinker, who is a member of the Committee on General Education, wrote in an e-mail, “Bok’s involvement would be a fabulous opportunity for the Harvard community.”

Pinker added that Bok’s recent book, “Our Underachieving Colleges”—which contains relevant curriculum data and information on what does and does not work in higher education—came out too late for the committee members to digest.

Bass Professor of English and American Literature and Language Louis Menand, another member of the Committee on General Education, said there is a very good chance the proposals for an overhaul of the Core will fall through.

“It was kind of a compromise proposal,” he said, “There are certain people on the committee who wouldn’t mind revisiting it.”

In a 1978 Crimson op-ed, Bok wrote that the former General Education program was lacking a clear sense of purpose and permitting students to sample from too large and varied an assortment of courses loosely assembled under the broad rubrics of Humanities, Social Sciences and Natural Sciences.

“When students can satisfy the requirements by taking ‘The Scandinavian Cinema’ or ‘Biology of Cancer,’ one inevitably wonders whether the program still reflects any clear sense of intellectual priorities,” Bok wrote in the op-ed.

In reference to Bok’s preference for more carefully delineated categories of courses, Menand pointed out that when Bok started to develop the idea for the Core in the early 70s, it was a very different era.

“The faculty in general were very anti-canon and all that stuff, so they had to produce something that didn’t look like an old-fashioned ‘Great Books’ course,” he said, “I would imagine that Derek would have a different take on what is necessary right now.”

According to Phyllis Keller, author of “Getting at the Core: Curricular Review at Harvard,” during the last review, Bok would attend meetings of the committees to show his interest, but he was not directly involved in discussion.

“Although he never spoke and he sat at the back of the room, his presence gave an air of importance to the whole operation,” said Keller, who served as associate dean of academic affairs during the last review.

Classics Department Chair Richard F. Thomas wrote in an e-mail that while he expects Faculty members to be interested in Bok’s views, he thinks Bok will play a minimal role in the future of the review.

“I expect he will do as he did while presiding over the University the last time a major overhaul of the College’s curriculum was carried out,” he wrote. “I expect he will look to the Faculty and their Dean to discuss and put in place the curriculum whose implementation and teaching is their business.”

Thomas speculated that the appointment of a new Faculty dean will be made around the time of Commencement or earlier.

“Since we don’t really know who is going to be in charge, maybe we want to wait and find out who that person is first,” Menand said.

Andrew Schlesinger, the author of “Veritas: Harvard College and the American Experience,” said Bok will stabilize the university as he did after the commotion of the 60s.

“One of his claims to fame is his ability to minimize conflict,” Schlesinger said of Bok, “As Harvard president, he was a peacemaker and a crisis-solver. He doesn’t like to rock the boat.”

—Lois E. Beckett contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Johannah S. Cornblatt can be reached at jcornbl@fas.harvard.edu