 | |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
President of Yale, or CEO of Yale, Inc.?
BY JULIA PAOLITTO
The Gilded Age of the university president is over—but don't tell that to Yale President Richard Levin, GRD '74. The past year has proved a tumultuous one for the leaders of Yale's peer institutions: the announcement of former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers's appointment as president of Harvard ignited a series of debates that has spilled over onto the editorial pages of The New York Times for two weeks running. After an embarrassingly short two-year tenure, Brown University President Gordon Gee abruptly announced his decision to resign in favor of a position at Vanderbilt. Brown then achieved a coup of its own, luring away Smith College President Ruth Simmons to take Gee's place. Princeton, Columbia, New York University, and the City College of New York have all announced the imminent departures of their presidents over the past six months, and Yale's neighbor Connecticut College lost a president in October after a faculty petition demanded her resignation.
|
Yet Levin remains securely—and even happily—ensconced in Woodbridge Hall, declaring, "I do love this job, and I intend to be around for a while. I find it challenging and invigorating." In a year when U.S. News & World Report calculated the average term of the American college president to be a mere seven years, Levin is near the close of his eighth. His tenure is one that History Professor Emeritus Gaddis Smith, GRD '61, characterizes as unique for one in his position. "Levin is unusual in that he maintains serenity in the face of enormous pressure," he said.
If composure is one requirement for a stable Ivy League presidency, what are the others? Alumni wandering the campus during the Tercentennial events this weekend may wax nostalgic about the days of Kingman Brewster, TD '41, who used his presidency as a bully pulpit to speak out on civil rights, but current students and scholars on education are more likely to see a flair for financial management as a necessary job requirement for a university head. What, then, does it mean to be the president of Yale, or any institution of higher learning, for that matter? What type of leadership do institutions demand in an era when being a campus leader means representing a community of interests and demands that are increasingly disjunctive?
|
Trying to find a job description under the listing "Yale University President" would be a fruitless task, for Levin's position is a paradoxical one. He has testified before the Science and Technology Caucus of the United States Senate; earned a membership in Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig's "Blue Ribbon Task Force on Baseball Economics," an elite panel entrusted with bringing the finances of Major League Baseball back from a bloated near-death; and has just returned from chairing a committee on intellectual property for the National Academy of Sciences in Washington. Yet in a Thurs., Apr. 12 column in the Yale Daily News, former Dwight Hall Co-Coordinator Shayna Strom, DC '02, targeted Levin as a symbol of "Yale's reluctance to take risks or exert leadership in a nation already lacking in educational leaders" [YDN 4/12/01]. She noted in particular his hesitancy to stake a position on issues that have dominated campus and even national politics such as financial aid reform and d4T, the AIDS drug developed at Yale.
|
Levin may be an easy target, but criticisms of his seemingly diffident moral leadership are echoes of a larger educational debate that has been gaining momentum for years. On Fri., Feb. 2, Reverend Theodore Hesburgh, president emeritus of Notre Dame and the first educator to receive the Congressional Gold Medal for distinguished service to the nation, wrote a scathing editorial in the Chronicle of Higher Education entitled, "Where are College Presidents' Voices on Important Public Issues?" [Chronicle 2/2/01]. Decrying the complacency and insularity of university presidents on significant national issues, Hesburgh offered a litany of complaints that have become standard fare in study after study on the state of higher education. He accused college presidents of spending too much time raising money, of mistakenly treating their potential moral authority as merely a managerial position, and of remaining "simply too busy to speak out on issues beyond the immediate concerns of their institutions."
While Hesburgh's vituperation has drawn equally passionate responses from other college presidents and educators, his accusations have long been substantiated, both statistically and anecdotally. The American Council on Education's (ACE) National Presidents' Study for the year 2000 ranked fundraising as the primary use of time by presidents at all private and research universities and noted that less than half of all college presidents spend a considerable amount of time on community relations and academic programs. Add to this the assessments of the typical university president as a "super-accountant" or corporate CEO—no less an authority than John Kenneth Galbraith notes that the primary function of a college president is to raise money for the institution. And when former Harvard President Derek Bok defines the achievement or failure of a college president by "how much money you raise, not what you raise the money for," the state of the college president today is damning.
Still, Levin contends that the demands of being a moral leader and skilled manager "are not necessarily in opposition," adding, "I think the people that lead most effectively are good CEOs." And while he insists that the pressures of fundraising and fiscal management "do not at all" outweigh his other duties as President, it is hard to miss the subtext of his refrain at the Open Forum held last week: "Would you like to manage the entire budget?"
This state of affairs is "lamentable, but one can explain it," notes Richard Hersh, a senior fellow at the Rand Corporation's Council for Aid to Education in New York and the former president of Hobart and William Smith College. The formula of the decreasing celebrity of a college president, added to the increasingly litigious, diverse, and competitive environment of higher education, creates a role for the president that requires him to balance budgets and constituencies rather than moral and political values.
Levin offers his own job description as one that entails equal parts vision, management, and negotiation. "One has to deal with many constituencies with very different perceptions of the University's role—there are many demands on universities from students, faculty, alumni, the city around you, the national government, and so forth," he explains. "There are aspects of this job that do require very strong management skills, and in that sense, you are a CEO." Hersh puts it more simply. "The stress and complexity of the position have made it a very driven place—everybody owns you, wants you, and eats you up," he said.
Yale's own presidential history clearly reflects the recent changes in college leadership. A. Whitney Griswold, Class of 1929, and Kingman Brewster, TD '41, arguably Yale's first "modern presidents," embodied the charismatic authority that many see as lacking in today's university leaders. Griswold, in addition to being widely quoted in the national media for his championing of athletics, academic freedom, and the liberal arts against government intrusion, was "a master of the English language," according to Smith. Even students unfamiliar with Yale's history can most likely recite the legacy of Brewster as a civil rights advocate and relentless defender of Bobby Seale during the Black Panther trial who brought the struggle for racial equality to campus.
Smith is quick to note that Brewster was also "a marvelously theatrical character who had a tremendous zest for speaking out." If these descriptions don't seem to fit Levin, or any Yale president in recent memory, it's hardly surprising. Yale has had what Smith calls "tragedies in its presidencies" in the past half-century. Griswold died of cancer in office. Brewster left Yale exhausted and depleted to become a college master at Oxford. His successor, A. Bartlett Giamatti, SY '60, GRD '64, had a difficult eight years in office and left in anger to become the commissioner of baseball. He died of a heart attack a few years later when he was barely 50 years old. Benno Schmidt, Jr., TC '63, LAW '66, Levin's predecessor, had a troubled tenure as well, leaving Yale deeply in debt after just six years at its helm.
And then there is Levin. The increasing strain and demands of the job clearly took its toll on all of Levin's predecessors, yet he remains happily and confidently determined to continue. He even notes that he is in what he calls "the second phase of [his] presidency." He says that he has largely accomplished the goals of his first phase: bringing the University's finances back into order, planning the monumental renovations of virtually the entire campus, and improving Yale's citizenship in the city of New Haven. Science Park, focusing on rebuilding Yale's academic strengths in the sciences, and the expansion of its international programs began phase two, because, Levin claims, "after five years I realized that these goals had been accomplished and we had to reach for more ambitious goals."
Such confidence may appear misleading to students still dissatisfied with the University's policy on sweatshops, tenure, and graduate student unionization, but Levin has largely fulfilled the goals identified by students and faculty as requiring immediate attention when he was hired. Editorials and news reports prior to Levin's appointment in 1993 repeatedly outlined the perceived problems needing immediate resolution by the next president in straightforward terms: "First, people don't seem to get along here. Second, the University currently lacks a concrete plan to cut the deficit. Third, and most important, the University faces a formidable civic problem—New Haven is Yale's albatross" [YDN 3/23/93]. Levin may not have the fiery eloquence of Brewster, but he clearly understands how to meet the demands of his job successfully—even if those demands may require a corporate mentality and the ability to be a consummate conciliator.
Yet Levin insists that his position does not require him to abandon the possibility of moral leadership in favor of playing chief financial officer of Yale, Inc. The problem, he says, is that "people misconstrue what constitutes moral leadership—they think making statements to The New York Times is moral leadership. Well, maybe it is, but there are other ways to accomplish things that actually drive towards important social goals." Hersh notes, "The number of times I ended up doing something nationally, they were really rooted in my own campus. Everything that goes on in society goes on on a college campus."
Levin would appear to agree. Comparing his legacy to that of Brewster, he is adamant in claiming, "To my way of thinking, the most important contributions of Kingman Brewster were not the once-in-a-while statements about national issues that he made, but opening Yale to religious and racial minorities, opening Yale to women. By far, the most important contributions he made were internal matters. They required vision and leadership and courage to do, but they didn't have to do with making broad public pronouncements. They had to do with making Yale better."
Levin's definition of moral leadership is passionate, but it is also in keeping with the times. For better or worse, many would argue that education has entered the marketplace. Students, faculty, and alumni are treated as consumers whose leader may be a CEO, a job whose most important leadership qualification may be one of non-leadership: an ability not to rock the boat. Levin's conviction that being a moral leader does not require making public pronouncements is an unfortunate but true one, according to Hersh. "What would happen if more presidents spoke out on more issues of concern?" he wonders. "I have evidence that in fact no one cares." Graphic of President Levin by Hyura Choi.
All materials © 2001 The Yale Herald, Inc., and its staff.
Got any questions, comments, or advice? Email the online editors at
online@yaleherald.com.
Like to join us?