Brown University

When I arrived at Brown, it was no secret that in terms of its finances, it was the weakest of the Ivy League institutions. I wasn't too worried about this because The New York Public Library, and the University of Pennsylvania, had prepared me not to dwell on financial weaknesses and perceived limitations but on possibilities and potentialities. I was eager to tackle Brown's problems, just as I had at The New York Public Library. I quickly came to love Brown the way I loved the story of David and Goliath, because it was competing with some of the best higher education institutions in the United States, and attempting to keep pace with them. Even though Brown had limited resources, it had unlimited human aspirations. At the time, I likened Brown to the nation of Japan, which is slightly smaller in area than the state of California and has few natural resources other than its proximity to the sea—and yet, because of its human talent and the imagination and will of its population, as well as their work ethic and dedication to education—has made itself into an economic giant and a real player on the world stage. That same kind of self-confidence, imagination and daring seemed to me to be the hallmark of Brown.

What I also loved about Brown was that it was a university where every professor actually taught. They did justice to their title, professor: they professed. And they didn't approach teaching as a "load"—it was a responsibility and a privilege. Brown did not have a research faculty, a graduate faculty and an undergraduate faculty, but just one faculty for one cohesive student body. Professors were certainly devoted to their research but also to the depth and quality of their teaching. This true dedication to teaching students fit with my vision of a university, which was—and is—that the faculty is the heart and soul, the bone marrow and blood of the university that shapes the character and strengthens the foundations of the institution.

The students, faculty and staff seemed almost sassy to me, and I knew that the university had the qualities of imagination and daring to be great. Yes, its resources were limited, but in terms of human talent, imagination, dedication, and work ethic on the part of students and faculty, it seemed to me that Brown excelled. During my time at the university (1989-1997), I often thought of the saying that a great tradition can be inherited, but greatness itself must be won. In that same vein, the mantle of excellence must also be earned, again and again, over time. In other words, as Andrew Carnegie once said, no person or institution should rest on the accomplishments of their ancestors alone because then "the most fruitful part of [your] family, like the potato, lies underground." [28]

Brown had been in the "earning" business for almost two-and-a-half centuries. Upon assuming the presidency, I was deeply aware that Brown owed much of its success to a handful of great leaders in the past, such as Francis Wayland, who was the fourth president of the university, serving from 1827 to 1855. At that time, the institution had three professors, two tutors and only ninety students. Brown's property consisted of two college buildings, used as lecture rooms and dormitories for students. In 1850, President Wayland wrote that "the college has not for more than forty years received a dollar from public or private benevolence. We have a tolerable college not actually starved but in salutary fear of starvation."

Wayland, I should note, was a man of many accomplishments: he wrote the first textbook on economics and was among the early curriculum reformers. In fact, Brown remained small and impoverished until the decade after the Civil War. But Wayland recognized early on the need for fundamental change. The college had a rigid curriculum; memorization, tested through daily recitations, was the prevailing form of instruction. Like other American colleges of the period, Brown relied on pedagogic principles and disciplinary rules thought to be appropriate for keeping adolescent boys—by far the largest group of individuals attending the nation's colleges—in order. Seeking to rescue Brown from its educational doldrums and at the same time make the institution more useful to the city, state and nation, Wayland urged major changes that, in time, came to include a place in the curriculum for science and technology, allowed for student choice in the subjects studied, and established courses in English literature and modern languages. The "New System" he championed, which was detailed in his famous Report to the Corporation [of Brown University] on Changes in the System of Collegiate Education, was much discussed by contemporary educators and has been a key source for twentieth century historians. Aiming to extend education to others than those entering the learned professions, the report proposed changes in the curriculum through which, by adopting "a system of equivalents, we may confer degrees upon a given amount of knowledge, though the kind of knowledge which makes up this amount may differ in different instances," and offer education to "the agriculturist, the manufacturer, the mechanic, or the merchant." [29]

For me, Francis Wayland embodied the proof that needs don't present opportunities: ideas do. Every institution has needs. What distinguishes one institution from another is the leadership's vision as well as the will, patience and courage to fight for and implement needed reforms or new directions that will serve the institution's core ideals.

Following the example of Francis Wayland, 119 years later—in 1969—Brown University unveiled a new curriculum. Known as "The Brown Curriculum," it gave Brown University an advantage over other Ivies: by encouraging students "to study broadly by choosing courses according to their developing interests," [30] the curriculum attracted bright, self-reliant students from across the nation who wanted to take courses in different fields for the first two years of college, even some with a pass/fail grade, because it was important to them to acquire a broad spectrum of knowledge before they majored in any given subject. Brown's curriculum was controversial because there were those who felt that it gave students an opportunity to avoid taking core courses in math, science, English, history, etc. Since I was a product of Stanford's core curriculum and believed in intellectual cohesion and "high standards," my appointment was welcomed by those commentators who said they were sure that I would "revisit" the curriculum. I did, by instituting a major curricular review, which resulted in measures aimed at improving the guidelines for students and advisors to enable them to choose wisely from the university's broad offerings and other requirements that helped to strengthen the rigor, structure and philosophical foundation of the curriculum while retaining its flexibility. As part of the review we carried out — though I was assured that the curriculum was balanced — I asked to see a record of the courses that an entire class had taken over four years. To the great surprise of many, it turned out that the students had chosen to take math, science and other courses one would have predicted that they would shun. That gave me confidence that Brown's curriculum was not designed to help students avoid certain courses but to provide guidance about their choices.

In the meantime, however, I thought it was important to clarify my educational philosophy and modus operandi at the beginning of my presidency rather than reveal it piecemeal throughout my tenure. In that regard, there were two main points I wanted to make: first, that as far as I was concerned, academic freedom cannot, and would not, be violated. Second, that I did not accept demands: petitions, yes; comments, yes; criticism, yes; but not demands, especially nonnegotiable demands, which had been part of the "spring rites" at many universities. But while making these points, I also wanted to be clear that creating an environment where real debate and discussion were welcomed and encouraged was very important to me. After all, debate, discussion, even controversy, including the struggle between orthodoxy and heterodoxy, have been at the heart of intellectual movements for centuries. Students had to become comfortable with the idea that controversy cannot be avoided; debate cannot be silenced: to do either is to abandon the advancement of knowledge. The pursuit of knowledge, above all else, is the mission of the university, and not all lessons are confined to formal study. Brown's student body was so diverse that in and of itself, it presented an opportunity for learning, meaning that if one's heart and mind were open, it was possible to develop a deep understanding of other people, other customs, other beliefs and other ways of looking at life, religion, culture, human relationships, politics, etc. If that can be done, the path to real tolerance is open: the ability to accept and respect humanity's multitude of differences, not because this or that law says you must, but because knowledge has helped you to understand universal values and to build a bridge between yourself and the rest of the world. That notion—of tolerance based on real understanding, and on knowledge, rather than on the more shifting sands of some concept of "political correctness"—was one that I focused on throughout my presidency at Brown and urged the faculty and students to pursue, as well.

It was not just different points of view in the realm of politics that I wanted heard on campus, but also those of religious and ethnic diversity. Toward that end, in 1996, Brown invited the Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of Ismaili Muslims, to be the first Muslim to give a baccalaureate address at any American higher education institution. I encouraged public readings of the Bible, the Talmud and the Koran as well as readings from Hindu and other texts that reflected the makeup of Brown's student body and supported the many religious groups on campus as well as the various chaplaincies.

Nurturing an environment where diversity and integration are the norm is an important role for a university. In the past, it seems to me, there were three areas of society where people from different ethnic groups, classes, religions, races and regions of the world had the opportunity to meet. One was the army, another was the workplace and the third was in public institutions, especially public schools. Since the draft is gone, and both public schools and the workplace are increasingly reluctant to discuss issues of race, religion, and ethnicity (except in terms of adhering to laws and regulations), that leaves the university as a critical venue not only for education and learning but also for acculturation encounters of many sorts. It is also important, in view of the U.S. role as a world power with many international obligations, that the university help to build bridges between the many divergent groups that comprise our own campus communities before we try to build bridges with others abroad. After all, the United States and its universities represent microcosms of humanity, the very essence of the concept e pluribus unum, and must provide models for other multinational, multiethnic and multireligious societies.

In preparation for my inauguration as the sixteenth president of Brown University, I had the opportunity to collaborate with the faculty, staff and students to put my ideas into action, I worked for several months on my inaugural speech, which I delivered on April 9, 1989. The inauguration seemed to me to be like a wedding, a ceremony where you're making your vows to the institution instead of to a person, to its values, its past, its present and its future—and to its possibilities. My address stressed the fact that over the next century, the university and society faced awesome and complex problems. I highlighted three of them. First, the integration of knowledge: "The greatest challenge facing modern society and civilization," I noted, "is how to cope with and how to transform information into knowledge." Second, rededication to the liberal arts: referring to a remark of Justice Felix Frankfurter that "the mark of a truly civilized man is confidence in the strength and security to be derived from an inquiring mind," I explained that is why I believe in the importance of a liberal arts education. Third, mutualism: "More than ever," I told my audience, "we need to recover a sense of the wholeness of human life and understand the human condition. Every human being needs direct personal contact with the great stories, myths and fiction of the human race, an encounter with history in order to begin to know oneself and to sense the potentialities that lie within one's reach and the reach of other human beings."

I concluded by reaffirming my conviction that ignorance is a sin; it deprives the individual of knowledge and autonomy and dignity. Education, learning and scholarship constitute acts of faith in the continuity of humanity. They honor the past and serve as a witness to the future. After all, the business of education is the creation of the future. It was with all these ideas in mind that I began my tenure at Brown.

What Makes a University a University?

It probably goes without saying that a university is an extraordinarily complex organization. An apt analogy is to think of the university as a kind of mini city-state which, as was long ago elucidated by Aristotle, was the most complete community, because it was supposed to be self-sufficient and existed for the benefit of its citizens. [31] The comparison remains timely because universities, like city-states, have their own governance, structure, organization, autonomy, regulations, culture and mores, and their own history and identity. Both also have streets, roads and buildings to maintain; they have an entertainment "industry" to operate —with dozens of sports teams, choirs, orchestras, theaters, magazines, performances, and the like — and they have newspapers, radio and television stations, publishing enterprises, "propaganda" machinery, security forces, unions, governing bodies, revenue systems, "taxation" in the form of tuition hikes and fees, housing, health and career services, artists, scientists in labs making discoveries, development officers in the business of "revenue enhancement," bookstores — the analogies can go on and on. They even have their own judicial processes, which often are at variance with the established legal system of a city, state or country. An example of this is the student handbook of Plymouth State University in New Hampshire, which describes this quite clearly: A University's judicial system is not a court of law. The two systems are independent, have a different purpose, process, standard used to determine responsibility, and sanctioning philosophy. While some procedural elements may seem similar the University judicial system is founded on educational philosophies. [32] And, like a city-state, universities are subject to demonstrations, strikes and protests about everything from the salaries of workers to national and international issues that students may want the university to take a stand on, one way or another (as was often the case during the Vietnam era or with respect to apartheid in South Africa or civil rights in the U.S., not to mention, currently, the war in Iraq).

Clearly, then, since the university is such a complex organization, the presidency is among the most complicated tasks an individual can ever take on. Those who have accepted the challenge have had some interesting things to say about it. Among them was Henry Wriston, who served as president of Brown University from 1937 to 1955. In portraying the president's job, he wrote: "The president is expected to be an educator, to have been at some time a scholar, to have judgment about finance, to know something about construction, maintenance, and labor policy, to speak virtually continuously in words that charm and never offend, to take bold positions with which no one will disagree, to consult everyone, and to follow all proffered advice, and do everything through committees, but with great speed and without error."

These expectations, it should be noted, are not limited to the leaders of private universities. Clark Kerr, who was president of the University of California from 1958 to 1967, gave a similar description: "The American university president is expected to be a friend of the students, a colleague of the faculty, a good fellow with the alumni, a sound administrator with the Trustees, a good speaker with the public, an astute bargainer with the foundations and the federal agencies, a politician with the state legislature, a friend of industry, labor and agriculture, a persuasive diplomat with donors, a champion of education, generally...a spokesman to the press, a scholar in his own right, a public servant at the state and national levels, a devotee of opera and football equally, a decent human being, a good husband and father...He should be firm, yet gentle, sensitive to others, insensitive to himself; look to the past and the future, yet be firmly planted in the present; he should be both visionary and sound, affable, yet reflective...a good American but ready to criticize the status quo fearlessly; a seeker of truth, where the truth may not hurt too much; a source of public policy pronouncements when they do not reflect on his own institution." What can happen to a president who seeks to fill every role that everyone on campus and off wishes to see him or her play is a metamorphosis into a kind of glad-hander who is not fully in charge of the university's direction or directing its mission. That does nobody any good and diminishes the office holder. In the words of John Silber, president of Boston University from 1971 to 1996, "Presidents who turn the most important and most difficult tasks of university administration over [to others] are unworthy of the title of president." [33]

For the president of a university as well as other administrators, one of the most critical challenges is finding ways to rise above the daily problems and routine in order to keep working toward the ultimate goal of fulfilling the university's mission without being bogged down by the mechanics of how things will get done. Not only must a successful university president understand and identify what the essential issues and tasks are, he or she must be able to mobilize all the university stakeholders—students, faculty, alumni and staff, not to mention Trustees—around these common concerns and a shared vision of the university and the goals to be achieved. First, of course, the president has to help promote a university culture in which each member of the community considers him or herself to be a stakeholder, so that more than just benefiting from the institution for one reason or another, he or she takes responsibility for its future and its well-being. Equally important is that goals established for the university must be achievable, and that plans to achieve them must be realistic; otherwise these will remain only pipe dreams. What's more, plans should have well-thought-out implementation provisions and timetables; if one goes forward without a good set of blueprints at the ready, progress will be sporadic and failure may result, thus contributing to cynicism about the university's goals and the administration's ability to ever reach them. In fact, being able to manage cynicism is one of the hallmarks of leadership. That is why great visions have to be accompanied by achievable benchmarks and measurable accomplishments. This can be difficult for many reasons, but particularly because change of any kind often generates conflict. Some university presidents decide they want to avoid conflict at any cost. But risks must be taken, even those that involve a president staking his or her reputation—and job —on the outcome. In such cases, if one believes in one's vision and the soundness of the plan of action that has been decided upon, then no other course can, or should, be followed. After all, it is easy to be mediocre. Excellence, on the other hand, exacts a steep price in the form of time, dedication, patience and hard work—and sometimes in the face of organized opposition.

Naturally, these issues can be further complicated by the fact that universities don't exist in a vacuum. Universities are part of a larger community and they both affect and are affected by the politics, culture, people and environs with which they interact. In some regions, as manufacturing declines, colleges and universities become even more socially and economically important. Hence, it's necessary for universities and their leadership to be constantly and appropriately sensitive about how to coexist with and be supportive of their urban and rural communities. It is, in part, for these reasons that universities like Yale, Columbia, Clark, and the University of Pennsylvania (which is the largest employer in the Philadelphia area) have embarked upon economic, social and educational programs that connect them with and serve their communities in order to maintain the kind of positive relationships that are necessary for both the university and the community to thrive. Brown, for example, has been integrally involved in the Providence Plan, which was established in 1992 to contribute to urban renewal and economic and cultural development in Providence, Rhode Island, improve the city's public schools, and contribute to local development.

Competition with other higher education institutions also influences many elements of how a university functions, how it perceives itself and is perceived by others, even what its policies and educational offerings are—indeed, almost every area of university life may be affected by concerns about competition. The influence of market forces on a higher education community that is part public, part private, and includes both nonprofit and profit-making institutions, only continue to grow. Colleges and universities compete for students, faculty, athletic titles, revenue, rankings and prestige, [34] a process that in some instances may distort the true public aim of higher education, which is to produce educated citizens whose lives will be productive and rewarding, for themselves certainly, but also for the larger society.

For a university and its leaders, therefore, it's important to put competition into perspective: what is its aim? What is the competition for? How can it serve the university's overall mission and its goals? How can it help to define the unique contributions that a particular university is able to make, not only to its students and faculty, but to the wider community, as well? That last question is critical, because the diversity of our higher education system is one factor that gives it great strength. Individual institutions have traditionally emphasized different functions and have complemented each other by meeting different local, regional, national and international needs—by providing educational opportunities to a diverse population, by expanding scientific and technical knowledge, and by offering pathways for continuing education.

In the years to come, however, competition in terms of higher education may not be simply a matter of American colleges and universities jostling for position on a "best colleges and universities" list. The specter of international competition looms on the horizon—particularly in our post-9/11 era, where security concerns, along with increased tension between many countries around the globe and the United States, as well as the immigration issues that have made it difficult for foreign students to obtain visas, have fed a decline in foreign student enrollment, down nearly 3 percent since the 2001-2002 academic year. [35] The number of undergraduate students enrolled in 2003-2004 actually fell by some 5 percent, according to the Open Doors 2004 report, published by the Institute of International Education. [36] Graduate enrollment is also suffering. A survey by the Council of Graduate Schools, released in March 2006, reported that while in the 2006 academic year the number of foreign students who applied to American graduate programs increased by 11 percent from the year before, reversing two years of decline, that number is still lower than in the years before 2003. In 2003-2004, for example, the number of foreign students applying to U.S. graduate programs decreased by 28 percent and by an additional 5 percent in the following academic year. [37] At the same time, however, another report, again from the Institute of International Education, notes that the number of American students studying in foreign countries totaled nearly 206,000 in 2004-2005, an eight percent increase over the previous year. While in 2002-2003 about two-thirds of those U.S. students attended universities in Europe, enrollments in Latin American universities increased by 14 percent to 27,000. Enrollments in Africa (nearly 5,000) and Oceania—mainly Australia and New Zealand—rose some 16 percent to nearly 13,000. [38]

One also should not overlook the impact of rising tuitions at American colleges and universities, along with the reluctance of some nations to "invest" in American higher education without a guarantee of a return on their investment when their students eventually come home and contribute to national development. In addition, as English increasingly becomes the lingua franca of the world, American universities now face increasing competition from England, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and other nations with quality educational programs that can be delivered seamlessly to foreign students fluent enough in English to plunge right into working on whatever degrees they desire. Furthermore, many private colleges are emerging that have little or no academic history behind them; modeled on profit more than intellectual or academic excellence, they are essentially educational franchises offering teaching and learning that, in many cases, may be of dubious quality.

To meet these international challenges, American colleges and universities have responded in a variety of ways, perhaps most notably by initiating or expanding collaborative educational ventures, some of which have been in existence for many years, such as the American University of Beirut, which was founded in 1866 as a private, independent, non-sectarian institution of higher learning, functioning under a charter from the State of New York; the American College of Thessaloniki (formerly Anatolia College), founded in 1886 and incorporated under the laws of the State of Massachusetts in 1984; and the American University in Cairo, founded in 1919. More recently, a number of new universities have been established such as the American University in Bulgaria, the American University in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakh-American University, and the American University of Armenia. Other strategies include building extensions of American university campuses abroad. Perhaps one of the best examples of this is Education City in Qatar, where Cornell University has become the first American university to offer its M.D. degree outside the U.S.; Carnegie Mellon offers undergraduate business and computer science degree programs, and other universities such as Georgetown University and Texas A&M have also established programs. In other examples, the Hopkins Nanjing Center, located on the campus of China's Nanjing University and jointly administered by both the Johns Hopkins and Nanjing universities, offers both certificate and degree programs. Stanford University has established itself in Japan; France's graduate business school, INSEAD, has a campus in Singapore, a Regional Research Centre in Israel and is creating a Dual Degree Executive MBA program in conjunction with Tsinghua University in China focused on "building global mindsets" for "transcultural executives." The United Nations University has thirteen research and training centers around the world; its International Institute for Software Technology has plans to expand throughout Africa and Latin America. (In a related effort, MIT, through its OpenCourseWare program, plans to publish the materials from virtually all of MIT's undergraduate and graduate courses online so they are available to the world.)

These welcome alliances are further strengthened by joint research projects carried out by American universities and institutions abroad, efforts which are in turn reinforced by cooperation among national academies. For example, TWAS (known as the Third World Academy of Sciences until 2004), which is based in Trieste, partners with the African Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences in the United States, among others, uniting more than 800 scientists from some 90 countries. As is well known, many foreign leaders have attended American universities, which provides additional incentives to partner with U.S. academic institutions, especially for nations struggling to "catch up" in terms of science and technology or to recover from declines in those areas, as well as economic downslides that occurred during times of political repression or upheaval.

In an unfortunate corollary, it's interesting to note that this same cooperative spirit, which promotes alliances between American universities and international partners, does not seem to thrive domestically. For an American university to establish a partnership with a foreign university may be seen in the U.S. as a prestigious development, but for an American university to create similar partnerships with other American universities is more the exception than the norm, as at home, it is often seen as a sign of weakness, or at least an indication of deficiencies. This is surprising because, in the United States, cooperation has been one of the hallmarks of our civic society. The late management guru Peter Drucker often noted that the concept of management—which requires cooperation at all levels of an institution or enterprise—originated in our universities and municipal sector. More often, however, as a fellow university president once remarked, "collaboration among universities is an unnatural act performed by non-consenting adults." This is most unfortunate because competition in the short-term can obscure the long-term benefits to be reaped from cooperation.

I have always believed strongly in the need for institutions to cooperate in order to strengthen their ability to do the work they were designed to carry out. At the University of Pennsylvania, when I was both dean and provost, we attempted to form alliances with other universities both within and beyond the Ivy League. But for the most part, those efforts were not successful because while during times of recession or other types of fiscal or operational distress, inter-institutional cooperation may seem like a light at the end of some otherwise endless tunnel, that desire to work together seems to vanish when the pressure is lessened and/or prosperity returns. Why is that? In part, I suppose, because so many institutions—particularly universities have the same needs in terms of capacity building, human resources and infrastructure, and often find themselves turning to the same sources of support. But perhaps an even larger obstacle is institutional pride: the sense that being the initiator of a cooperative effort might signal weakness. Also, the notion often arises that one institution might be benefiting more than the other, and that a relationship that appears symbiotic might actually be parasitic, instead. Or perhaps it is just human nature to band together when the going gets tough and then to go one's own way when things get better. I am reminded, for example, of how we quickly formed carpools during the energy crisis of the 1970s when gasoline was hard to come by at any price, but quickly fell back on our habit of relying on our own cars and driving alone when the pipelines began flowing again.

Both at the University of Pennsylvania and later, at Brown University, it was difficult to understand why we could not, for instance, work with other colleges and universities to invite speakers to address our various academic communities. We might, for example, ask an individual who students and faculty at many different campuses would be interested in hearing speak to tour for two or three weeks, while all the institutions shared the costs. On an even more practical level, colleges and universities could also share expenses by jointly ordering supplies such as paper, toner for printers, even pens and pencils, in larger volume, which usually results in an overall savings. But somehow, those proved to be mostly insurmountable challenges in terms of both major issues and minor ones, as well.

Clearly, given all these factors, the time is right to assess and reevaluate the health—and strength—of American higher education without simply assuming that because it has been the best in the past, it will continue to be the best education available in the future. As Derek Bok has noted, "[U]niversities need to recognize the risks of complacency and use the emerging worldwide challenge as an occasion for a candid reappraisal to discover whether there are ways to lift the performance of our institutions of higher learning to new and higher levels." [39]

The Fragmentation of Knowledge

Despite all the challenges they face, America's colleges and universities remain, unquestionably, the most democratic higher education institutions in the world. The American university is popular in the best sense of the term, admitting and educating unprecedented numbers of men and women of every race, age and social class. Students from every imaginable background—and here I speak from personal experience—have found a place in this nation's incredible variety of colleges and universities, public or private, large or small, secular or sectarian. Today, there are approximately 4,000 colleges and universities in our country, including some 1,200 public and private two-year institutions; they enroll more than 14.8 million students and annually grant some two million degrees.

American institutions of higher education continue to play a leadership role in the world, but, as we have seen, their international prominence can no longer be taken for granted. America's intellectual leadership—educators, scholars, scientists, social scientists, humanists, and others—must also become leaders in the area of curricular development and reform. If attention is not paid to the current state of affairs on many American campuses, our nation's colleges and universities will continue to drift in the direction of becoming a "Home Depot" of educational offerings. At the present time, for example, many major research universities often offer up to 1,800 undergraduate courses. Following this approach, there is no differentiation between consumption and digestion, no difference between information and learning, and often no guidance. Higher education should not be allowed to become an academic superstore of courses that are stacked up like sinks and lumber for do-it-yourselfers to figure out and assemble on their own into something meaningful.

Of course, the fact that this is a problem for our colleges and universities is a reflection of the Information Revolution that may, in the eyes of history, turn out to parallel, even outdo, the impact of the Industrial Revolution. The info-glut has inundated all of us in America, but its most telling effects are on our universities. On campus, the daunting arrival of information in the form of books, monographs, periodicals, films, videos, CDs, DVDs and MP3s has been compounded, in recent years, by an accelerating electronic torrent from millions of web sites and their attendant hyperlinks and databases that exist everywhere at once—at least, everywhere that the Internet can be accessed, which is fast becoming almost every single place on earth. In this regard, it is perhaps interesting to note that J.C.R. Licklider, the head of ARPANET, [40] the precursor to the modern Internet, termed the group of computer specialists he gathered to work on the nascent Net his "intergalactic network," [41] suggesting his belief that the World Wide Web, when it was finally born, would forge connections beyond and above anything then imaginable. Well, he may have been right, because as more and more of us go online, we are witness to an unprecedented democratization of access to information; hopefully, even to knowledge. While the web of connectivity that the pioneers of the Internet anticipated has indeed developed, it has spawned a troubling corollary: the continuing fragmentation of knowledge. For the higher education community, this is a particularly serious crisis because the constant, rapid—some say onslaught—of information has, by necessity, also brought about the triumph of an age of increasing specialization that has fractured the commonwealth of learning into isolated, silo-like disciplines, which in turn, have splintered into sub-disciplines and sub-sub disciplines and specialties.

This is not a new phenomenon—but its magnitude is new. The process of both growth and fragmentation of knowledge underway since the seventeenth century has only accelerated. Writing about the fragmentation of knowledge in the early years of the twentieth century, Max Weber criticized the desiccated narrowness and the absence of spirit of the modern intellectual specialist. [42] It was also this phenomenon of the modern specialist that prompted Dostoevsky to lament in The Brothers Karamazov about the scholars who "...have only analyzed the parts and overlooked the whole and, indeed, their blindness is marvelous!" And it was this phenomenon that led José Ortega y Gasset, in his Revolt of the Masses, as early as in the 1930s, to decry the "barbarism of specialization." In modern times, he wrote, we have more scientists, scholars and professional men and women than ever before, but fewer cultivated ones.

Today, the scope and the intensity of specialization is such that scholars and scientists have great difficulty in keeping up with the important yet overwhelming amount of scholarly literature of their own sub-specialties, not to mention their general disciplines. In effect, the university, which our society thinks of as embodying the unity of knowledge, in reality has become an intellectual multiversity where students often learn to frame only those questions that can be addressed through the specialized methodologies of their particular disciplines and sub-disciplines. Of course, this is not the direction that the founders of American higher education envisaged. One of the earliest promotional pamphlets about education ever published on the North American continent, a 1643 brochure, stated that the purpose of Harvard College was "To advance Learning and perpetuate it to Posterity." Now, however, there is a trend toward what the late educator and cultural critic Neil Postman called "technopoly," namely, "the submission of all forms of cultural life to the sovereignty of technique and technology," [43] wherein knowledge often recedes and marketable skills become paramount. Postman bemoaned the fact that living in a technopoly has made us a society of technicians and experts, heavily dependent on technology, and we have thereby lost the transcendent sense of the unifying principles and ultimate purpose of knowledge. At the same time, we are also losing the ability to partake of learning and education to the fullest possible extent.

It's not surprising, therefore, that today, the faculties of our universities are confronted with the difficult choices of balancing not only analysis and synthesis but also methodology and the relevant value of course content, thus placing more and more responsibility on students to form the synthesis. "Specialization," as noted the late scholar and professor William Bouwsma put it, "instead of uniting human beings into a general community of values and discourse, by necessity has divided them into small and exclusive categories/coteries, narrow in outlook and interest." This, in turn, in his opinion, tends to isolate and alienate human beings. "Social relations...are reduced to political relations, to the interplay of competitive and often antagonistic groups. Specialized education makes our students into instruments to serve the specialized needs of a society of specialists." [44]

Of course, the same information technologies that have been the driving force behind the explosion of information, growth of knowledge and its fragmentation, and hence, the age of specialization, also present us with profoundly integrative tools for meeting the challenge of that fragmentation. When we are not shuddering at the challenge of coping with the info-glut, we must marvel at the way the world's store of information is increasingly at our fingertips, thanks to such advances as voice recognition software and translation software that automatically translates one language into another. Information scientists—including our high-tech librarians—are also making greater use of digitization, turning information written on paper or recorded in other media into electronic form, and of artificial intelligence to automate information management tasks, including "data mining," the practice of having a computer continuously monitor and filter information according to set objectives.

This is an exciting age because for the first time in history, individual citizens can gain access to much of the world's store of knowledge. They can use their desktop, lap-top or hand-held computers to access the Internet, which has become an electronic version of the Library of Alexandria, which was founded in the third century B.C. by Ptolemy 1st. That was the first institution based on the premise that all the world's knowledge could be gathered under one roof—and for nine centuries it was a place of inspiration and scholarship.

Today, technology is radically modifying the space/time constraints of communications channels and offering great opportunities for making connections among disciplines and across disciplines. Online communications, for example (web sites, e-mail and the like), have provided new tools and opportunities for the scholarly community to share resources, though we must not forget that while the Internet, satellites and fiber optics have advanced communication, the raw input is still human speech and human ideas. The university remains at the nexus of these developments'the public commons where ideas and technology meet and interact. Thus, the process of assimilating new information technologies can help us think hard and deeply about the nature of knowledge and even about the mission of higher education itself. But progress in using technology to integrate disciplines on campus has often been disappointingly slow. Unless higher education does a better job of teaching students how to synthesize and systematize information, our society faces many problems. In his book, 1984, George Orwell described a world in which information and true knowledge were denied and propaganda substituted for both. In the twenty-first century, citizens can be denied knowledge by being inundated with mountains of raw and unconnected data. Our faith in computers may also tend to deceive us into thinking that whatever is not in the computer or data bank does not exist. If that were to happen, we would be in danger of being disconnected from archival material, unrecorded oral traditions, un-digitized manuscripts and anything else not placed on the Internet.

Many concerned educators are attempting to find solutions to this dilemma. There are, for example, numerous models for how universities might help students bring some structure to the vast amount of information to which they are constantly exposed. Thematic seminars and interdisciplinary team teaching are two ideas; others include examples such as an integrated course on the origin of the cosmos that might involve a geologist, an astrophysicist, a mathematician, a philosopher, an expert on religion, and so forth, providing a multi-dimensional view of the subject. Such a course might introduce students to the Ptolemaic, Copernican and Einsteinian views of the earth and the universe, allowing students to become acquainted with critical elements of science, philosophy, history and religion. Another example might be exploring the concept of agape and eros in several literary traditions including Western, Islamic, Buddhist, and others, which would mean learning about three or more different cultures. One could teach a nuanced and multifaceted sense of how recent events have impacted regions around the globe, bringing together scholars from different disciplines to explore comparative and competing ideas and theories about both recent and historic events.

The above are examples of how one may develop a deeper understanding of certain ideas, topics, and disciplines. This means that colleges and universities must teach students not only what we should know, but also what we don't know, and also discuss what the limitations of knowledge are. This is not a new challenge—it goes way back to the Socratic notion that true knowledge is knowing what you know and what you don't know. So while the computer allows us to access more information—faster and in a more usable form—we must keep in mind another of Neil Postman's warnings: "The computer cannot provide an organizing moral framework. It cannot tell us what questions are worth asking" [45] or even why they should be asked.

Leadership of an Evolving Institution

While dealing with the many issues—such as those addressed above—that the leadership of a university must confront, it's still essential to keep in mind that the main purpose of a university is to be an educational institution. This does not mean that the university's administration is not also preoccupied with the task of dealing with the many business, economic, legal, social, political and cultural aspects of university life and of the university's interactions with its many constituencies, but these efforts must never overshadow the focus on education. That's why a university exists: to educate people, and in carrying out that mission, the faculty is still its raison d'etre and its curriculum is its compact with the current generation of students, and with future generations, as well.

The university curriculum is not a menu that can be changed from day to day. In some instances, it has centuries of tradition behind it, and the courses that comprise the curriculum are taught by individuals who are constantly researching and enriching their knowledge of their fields, so their teaching is, and should be, the very essence of the evolution of thought and learning. As a result, there are always times when every university has to reexamine the nature, scope, character and content of its curriculum. Sometimes, of course, curricular changes can't wait; in the case of professional or business schools, for example, courses may have to be adapted to the demands of the marketplace and the expectation of the professions that students are preparing to enter. In other instances, especially in regard to undergraduate general education, there are competing philosophical and methodological schools of thought. There always has been and always will be debate as to what should be taught in order to train not only those going into specific professions but the "ordinary citizen" student as well—what do they need to know about history, about their society, about their culture, about the culture of others; about values, social mores, not to mention about competing spiritual and religious schools of thought, competing economic theories and systems, and about the evolving global context of just about everything they will be learning during their years in school?

While he was president of Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson is supposed to have observed, "It is easier to transfer an entire cemetery than to change a university curriculum," and in my experience, he has certainly proven to be correct. Proposed academic changes are not seen by faculty as abstract intellectual arguments or discussions but as vehicles for redistributing the university's resources. They are seen as zero-sum games in which there will be winners and losers because curriculum changes, for example, may dictate "faculty slots," and hence will engender competition among departments, schools, and many other realms of the university. So, there is great reluctance to accept change unless it is beneficial—in this order—to one's department, one's school, the allies of one's school, one's profession, and then, finally, to the university.

Though curricular leadership is, ultimately, vested in the faculty and is also the responsibility of the university president or his or her provost, the quality of the president's leadership will not be judged by performance in this one area alone. Many factors will contribute to how the president is perceived both inside the university and outside, including what type of leadership route he or she follows. There are, in fact, many different types of leaders: some people choose to lead by persuasion or by winning the confidence of different constituencies. There are other leaders who temporize, follow the flow and try to keep everyone and everything on an even keel, walking gingerly among competing factions on campus while trying to maintain peace. Focusing on "tranquility," however, is almost never in the long-term interest of the university. While following such a course of action, the president may ignore serious problems, leaving them for his or her successor to deal with, and may rationalize doing so by suggesting that since the faculty and trustees approved of the presidential actions—or inactions, as the case may be—then the president is not at fault if future administrations have to deal with issues that have been "left behind."

Other presidents may become overly concerned with their own popularity or legacy, which is also counterproductive for the university. In that connection, I remember that, years ago, I read that one should not be like a flag whose direction is governed by the wind but like the flagpole that provides stability. When presidents go in accordance "with the wind," trying to gauge the external, internal, or political currents at a university without having a clear educational philosophy or a plan of action, they are following a potentially disastrous course. The integrity of the president's leadership may suffer and again, the long-term interests of the university are unlikely to be served. I believe it is critical that a university's various constituencies understand that both the institution's long- and short-term interests are being taken seriously by those in charge and addressed with great care, honesty, and dedication. This means that the president and the university's leadership must be in agreement about the fact that they are accountable for the decisions, actions and policies of their administration. They must also be willing to recognize when mistakes have been made and similarly unwilling to rationalize failure.

The specter of failure—as well as of potential conflict—can hang over any leader's administration, especially if one has opted to emphasize "peace at any price" rather than a healthy respect for unavoidable conflict and its equitable resolution. What my experience has taught me is that any source of tension carries with it the potential to isolate those in leadership positions, but that doesn't have to be the case. When I was a teacher and later, as a university administrator, I believed it was a normal aspect of university life for there always to be conflict—between "old" views and "new" views; between students' ideas and those of their professors; between the beliefs and ideologies espoused by some and those cherished by others. And why not? A university, after all, is a center of debate and discussion about every conceivable issue that may come up in the classroom, from racism, to immigration, to ethics, to civil rights, to religion, to secularism, to the validity of scientific theories, to war and peace, nationalism and internationalism, and everything in-between. In the midst of all this, it would be na‰ve to think that tensions could be avoided, or that conflicts were an aberration. By their very nature, universities thrive on the energy of ideas, theories and notions rubbing up against and challenging each other, and the fact that the university environment encourages students and faculty to pursue these different ideas and different pathways is something to be celebrated, to be grateful for. And it's not just academic and ideological tussles that the university and its leadership get drawn into; add to the mix the town-and-gown conflicts that often come up along with other disputes and problems that may arise between the university community and its neighbors, and it's clear that a president can't simply sit comfortably at the top of the heap and hope that everything always goes well. It won't. So one cannot bury one's head in the sand nor can one view isolationism as a secure option. One has to take positions. One must speak about his or her ideas and convictions, and stand up for one's principles—otherwise, what is the point of having any?

With that said, however, it must be noted that all of the utterances of a president—even those individuals who have turned themselves inside out to be popular and to "maintain tranquility"—will be scrutinized, and any inconsistencies exploited. It is important that the rhetoric used in addressing issues and problems be consistent with reality. All of a president's life is constantly placed under a microscope and examined to determine whether in both his or her professional and private life, the president is acting in concert with the values of the university and considers him/herself part of the community, subject to the same rules and regulations as everyone else.

A president's behavior can come in for particular scrutiny during those times when there are labor, faculty or student strikes affecting the campus. If presidents' salaries are too high, their amenities too plentiful, these matters will surely become an issue. And if a president himself or herself becomes a source of controversy, dealing with that will also consume a lot of time and energy and distract from the progress of the university. It will also likely cause many in the community—including the faculty—to feel that the president is not "sharing their burden," particularly if his or her salary is raised and theirs is not. (That is not to say that university presidents don't deserve to be paid well; indeed, until recently, most only served an average of three-and-a-half years because of burnout. It is a lonely job, because it's difficult for a president to form friendships with faculty or administrators since that leaves him or her open to charges of favoritism. This has to be balanced against the fact that a university is a not-for-profit enterprise in which teachers and educators predominate and are expected to both exemplify and represent the values and traditions of the university.) Traveling first class on airplanes instead of economy, driving an expensive car, staying in top hotels or dining in pricey restaurants, all these actions will be noted and measured against what others in the community do'especially in a small town where everyone knows what everyone else is doing. Leaders' "perks" might be considered irrelevant—at least to some extent—in the corporate world, but they can easily become a matter of heated public discussion and debate and used as weapons in the university context. One must always remember that perceptions that go unchallenged many become substitutes for reality.

Let me provide an illustration from experience. Right after arriving at Brown, I asked one of the union stewards, Bill Bell, the simple question, "How are your families?" He said, "Funny you should ask—our families have never been on campus except when they have walked the picket line with us." I asked him what he would do about that if he were president of Brown, and he said he'd give a big annual party for the families of all the workers so that everyone felt included as part of the Brown community. I thought that was a brilliant idea, so I decided to do that. Every year at Brown, we held a campus-wide holiday party for two days, inviting the staff, faculty, their families, and students. Thousands of people came and there was skating, students singing, bands playing, games, food, refreshments—a grand celebration of Brown and all the members of its extended family.

During my tenure at Brown, we made it a point to emphasize the importance of the campus community and the significance of ceremonies and special occasions to the various constituencies because they helped to strengthen ties between all the different segments of the university. Commencement ceremonies, honors awards, parents week, special concerts or readings to celebrate a particular event—even special days to honor secretaries and staff—were all important. When unfortunate occasions arose, I attended funerals and memorial services for retired professors and staff, or helped to plant trees in remembrance of students and faculty who had died, because these were ways of strengthening the university's bonds and honoring its past. To celebrate the present, Brown instituted practices such as flying the flags of all the nations from which our students came and inviting the ambassadors of their countries to be present at ceremonies or even speak at the university. And to welcome the future, we continued to open Brown's famous Van Wickle Gate each year for the opening convocation of freshmen and greet them as they marched through. We also inaugurated a dinner in honor of the freshmen and gave another dinner in honor of the senior class. By the time of the senior dinner, I had come to know many of the individual students who I had welcomed as freshmen very well.

Such efforts take a lot of time and a lot of work, but they are enormously rewarding and they are necessary if a university president is committed to being the kind of leader who stands for the values of the university and represents everybody on campus. They also do away, symbolically, with any kind of visible "upstairs/downstairs" hierarchy and highlight the unity of the entire university community.

It is always valuable to address the entire university community about challenges to the institution rather than speak separately to different constituencies. In that way, only one message is being delivered and that helps lead to confidence in the president's public statements. The faculty and other constituencies then don't have to compare notes in order to divine presidential pronouncements or analyze discrepancies between practice and rhetoric.

One of the unique characteristics of the presidency of a university is that every gesture, every action, big or small on the president's part contributes to how well he or she is able to bring the community together and how the community will support the president, the institution—and each other—in times of difficulty. The test often comes when a genuine crisis arises because it is then that leadership can make all the difference in how an institution and those who are responsible for it are viewed not only during the crisis, but long after. In an essay on "Presidential Leadership in a Time of Crisis," [46] Philip L. Dubois, then president of the University of Wyoming, who, in the first seven years of his tenure led his university through crises that he calls "notable by their number and scope"—including the murder of Matthew Shephard, [47] —makes the point that "there is no substitute in times of community trauma for one comforting voice. And although every rule probably holds its own exception, that voice at a university must be the president's." In that same vein, it is also useful to remember that, for a university president, "while good deeds often go unnoticed, crises never do. This is because your stakeholders...are measuring your conduct during the crisis. They know that a crisis does not make change—it reveals character." [48]

Immediate crises notwithstanding, confrontations with the possibility of failure and looming sources of conflict and tension are hardly phenomena that will be forever frozen in time. Just as the future can be seen as a moving target, so, too, are the difficulties that can seem most pressing on any given day, because problems change and evolve, just like everything else that affects the life of an institution. This is particularly true at a university, where elements of the community, such as faculty and alumni, tend to remain stable, but where at least one major constituency changes every single year (sometimes, every semester)—I mean, of course, the great waves of students who come and go, over time. Every year, a class graduates and a whole new class arrives, its members bringing with them new ambitions, new goals, new ideas about how to live their own lives and interact with the world around them, plus new groups of parents and often new social and cultural issues—both national and international in scope. These students, in essence, are the new citizens of the university community—or at least, citizens in the making who are seeing their society and themselves in completely new ways. They are both observers and participants, working out in their minds and in their lives how they will approach their futures. They often have idealized what the university experience will be, not realizing that, like life itself, the university environment and even the educational experience is always in flux. The gap that may arise between the expectation and the reality of the university experience (and by extension, that of society at large)—supportive of cultural experiments, socially responsible, laboratories of change and idealism—can itself sow seeds of conflict and tension. Existing inconsistencies are often perceived as institutional hypocrisy, so students have to be engaged on that front and their concerns dealt with directly and honestly.

Hence, every year the university community is again faced with the challenge of educating, acculturating and absorbing into the larger community a whole new population of individuals who are variously anxious, excited, tentative, competitive, confused, shy, outgoing, brilliant, moody, average-, over- and under-achievers—and sometimes, a little bit of all those things and more. For me, seeing this ebb and flow every year always made me think of what Margaret Mead called "the whole gamut of human potentialities" that connects us all and of the duty of each generation to the ones that follow after and those that have gone before. This is a profoundly important concept for both the faculty and administration of an educational institution, since part of their responsibility is to help students not only craft a vision and a plan for the path that their own lives will follow, but also to make them understand that they have an indispensable role to play in the future of our nation and our society. In essence, educating an individual centers around imparting knowledge, but in a larger sense, it is also about preparing that individual to be a good ancestor—someone who, by being educated, will be able to both honor the past and improve the future. For Brown, that meant that our students would use the education they worked so hard to acquire not only for their own benefit but also to contribute to strengthening the institutions of our democracy and to embody, throughout their lives and careers, the values of a free society. These include the freedom to follow one's conscience, freedom of thought, respect for the rights and responsibilities of individuals as well as the rights of the minority and the majority—even the freedom, simply, to follow one's dreams.

The president's role, however, is not confined to the university alone. The responsibilities of the office extend beyond the campus. As Albert Yates, president emeritus of Colorado State University has written, "The challenges facing college and university presidents are not materially different from those in charge of any other large organization, but the responsibility for leading with virtue is greater because of the role that our institutions play in society...higher education remains our society's conscience—institutions that are empowered to question and challenge, that are expected to instill values and character, and that are perceived as standing for more than the pursuit of a healthy bottom line." [49] I absolutely agree.

Mobilizing Resources:
Alumni and Trustees

Whether they admit it or not, universities are in a perpetual fundraising mode. As dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and as provost of the University of Pennsylvania and later, as president of The New York Public Library, I had been involved with two major and very successful fundraising campaigns. Penn's campaign, launched in the fall of 1975, was called the Campaign for the Eighties and was designed to raise $255 million to maintain its fiscal stability, improve its physical infrastructure, and to implement some of its ambitious academic goals—this in a time when both the nation's economy and the university's finances were suffering. We met our target. For the Library, a public/private partnership not only raised over $327 million, as noted earlier, but also helped the institution to reclaim its preeminent position as a national treasure. The experience of these campaigns gave me the ingredients—and the inspiration—to be daring on behalf of Brown and its future when I became the university's president.

Like the Library and the University of Pennsylvania, I knew that Brown did not have to justify its existence, but it did need to articulate its mission and central role in the higher education firmament, it did need to get the attention of those who took it for granted and didn't understand or appreciate the integral role that Brown plays not only in the civic, cultural and educational life of Providence and Rhode Island, but the nation, as well. It was important to me, first at the Library and then at Brown, that these institutions not be seen as some sort of cultural relics or historical dinosaurs but as dynamic, evolving institutions determined to cope not only with the requirements of the present but the challenges of the future, too. For that to happen, we needed to implement bold, even audacious efforts that were nonetheless consistent with Brown's mission, history and unique character. We also needed the participation and support of the entire campus community. It was equally important to acknowledge the progress that had been achieved in the past by giving credit where it was due, keeping the engagement of those who had been loyal supporters of Brown while mobilizing those who, before, had not been invited into or felt truly a part of the Brown community.

All this, in fact, is what happened: in 1992, the university embarked on the most ambitious capital campaign in Brown's history, a five-year project called the Campaign for the Rising Generation. At first, the university's Trustees approached the campaign with trepidation thinking that our aspirations were unrealistic, but that soon turned into fierce determination to achieve the high goals we had agreed upon.

The majority of our faculty participated in the campaign, as did parents, students, staff, alumni and friends of Brown, all of whom responded with astonishing generosity, demonstrating just how committed the entire Brown extended family was to the university. The validity of our "daring" plan was confirmed at the campaign's midpoint when Brown alumni and alumnae, parents and friends, responding to a survey from the development office, expressed their support for the campaign's goals and endorsed their importance. This commitment was highlighted by such acts as the Class of 1945 giving $1 million to the campaign to mark their fiftieth reunion, the largest fiftieth reunion gift in Brown's history. The ultimate goal of the campaign was to raise $450 million; by the time the effort was concluded in 1996, we had raised $534 million from 55,000 individuals, foundations and corporations.

For many universities, campaigns are not only about money—they are a metaphor for telling or retelling the history of the institution. Such was the case with Brown, which relied not on a financial legacy but on the depth and breadth of talent, hard work, determination, innovation and academic excellence. It allowed us to connect—or reconnect—the people of Rhode Island and indeed, people across the nation, with the importance and contributions of Brown to the United States. It also helped us to reach out to the alumni, not just of Brown but also of Pembroke College, the women's college founded at Brown in 1891, which had merged with the university in 1971. It was a way to educate parents and students about the institution they had chosen over other universities by providing the historical context of Brown's academic development as well as highlighting the direction of its future. In addition, the campaign served to remind foundations and corporations about the university as a source of invention, research, innovation, education, experimentation, imagination, creativity and of course, scholarship. Campaigns are also a means to commit, or recommit an institution's governing Board to their stewardship of the institution and to recruit new Board members—both alumni and non-alumni—who will give not only their time and expertise but also financial support. These goals were also accomplished.

Mobilizing the alumni is certainly important in terms of fundraising, but it is absolutely essential in rallying support for any significant university initiative or reform. After all, it is these individuals who invested a good part of their youth in the university and staked their future on the education it provided them. They hope to take pride in their alma mater and to see real evidence that it has a regional, national and even international impact. They expect their university to continue to do justice to its traditions, adhere to standards of excellence and uphold its values—and they are not afraid to let the administration know if they feel let down in any of these areas...

In their capacity as members of governing boards, Trustees are a major influence on our universities. The critical role they can play in enriching the quality of an institution's work at all levels was brought home to me when I was dean, and later provost, at the University of Pennsylvania. At that time, I came to know Henry Salvatori, a very interesting, well-read, cultured, conservative businessman who had helped to launch Ronald Reagan's political career. Salvatori, who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, Class of 1937, had a critical mind. Whenever I went to Los Angeles, where he lived, I made it a point to see him. I remember that he always castigated the shortcomings of Communists, socialists, liberals, libertarians, Democrats, and even some conservatives and Republicans. One day, I asked him what he thought was the greatest weakness of capitalism and he replied that the corporate world often gathers together tremendous talent for the purpose of legitimizing their actions rather than for providing expertise and enlightenment. His words made a tremendous impression on me, and from then on, whether at The New York Public Library, at Brown University or at Carnegie Corporation of New York, I have made a conscious effort to engage the talents of Trustees and, when possible, tap their expertise on behalf of the institutions I have headed rather than expecting them to merely legitimize institutional decision making'and in doing so, the Library, the university and the foundation have been the beneficiaries.

In that connection, I was fortunate at the Library and at Brown University—and now, at Carnegie Corporation—to have worked with extraordinary Trustees who have focused on contributing to the formulation of institutional priorities without imposing their own personal biases or giving in to the temptation to micromanage. After all, managers can always be hired. The role of Trustees is to provide long-term policy guidelines for an institution and ensure accountability for how the institution's leadership implements those policies. This is particularly true for Trustees of institutions such as libraries, universities and foundations, which are obviously fundamentally different than for-profit business enterprises. They are extremely complex enterprises with a historical identity, a particular culture and many different constituencies with many different expectations of them and for them. They require the time and attention of very special individuals with deep insight into the indispensability of these institutions to America's national life.

It would be fascinating, I think, for someone to do a study of the people who serve on the Boards of the 4,000 public and private colleges and universities in the United States. Who are the individuals who accept the role and responsibility of being a Trustee? What motivates them to serve in the tradition of voluntarism that is one of our nation's great contributions to the world? What has been the legacy of these men and women? There are any number of different motivations for becoming a trustee of such institutions: among them are those who are carrying on a family tradition (in some cases, more than one or two generations may succeed each other on a board); those self-made men and women who take pride in the fact that they can return to their university as a Trustee; those who join out of a wish to serve or to learn, or to enter into a community of ideas. In particular, I have always found the commitment of those college and university Trustees who are serving their alma mater to be a moving and even inspirational combination of duty, pride, and a commitment to public service.

Many parents of foreign students and the students themselves, who receive no financial aid and pay full tuition to attend American universities, find it difficult to understand this kind of dedication, and especially the fact that Trustees often make substantial donations to their university—as, of course, do many alumni. This combination of service and philanthropy is unheard of in many societies outside the United States. In fact, America's public and private institutions are extremely fortunate that the tradition of service in our nation is so deeply ingrained in its citizens, including so many prominent individuals who feel a moral obligation to use whatever social, political or business-related platform they have earned through their own success—as well as, often, their private wealth—for the benefit of future generations.

In the process of serving, some Trustees get extremely attached to their organization or institution, not only intellectually but also viscerally. For universities, one of the challenges in these situations is to ensure that Trustees' interests—even devotion—are not "captured" by certain special interests at the university for the benefit of a particular school, a particular department, or a particular professor's (or group of professors') specific research interests. Board members have an obligation to see themselves, and conduct themselves, as Trustees of the entire university and must be sure that, even inadvertently, their loyalties, their personal philosophies and their preferences are never mobilized against fellow Trustees, or against the university administration or the president. Such situations can lead to paralyzing factionalization that is always harmful to the university, and will be particularly damaging during times of crisis. A university is not an extension of the Trustees; their job is not to cast their shadows over the institution but to ensure that the legacy of past generations as well as the accomplishments of the present continue to provide for continually deeper and richer educational opportunities for tomorrow's students. John Gardner, Carnegie Corporation's former president (1955 to 1967), once said that universities have always had both their lovers and their critics, but the critics have seldom been loving, and the lovers have seldom been critical. "On the one side," he warned, "those who loved their institutions tended to smother them in an embrace of death, loving their rigidities more than their promise, shielding them from life-giving criticism. On the other side, there arose a breed of critics without love, skilled in demolition but untutored in the arts by which human institutions are nurtured and strengthened and made to flourish. Between the two, the institutions perished." [50] I would add that yet another danger is being meddlesome. Well-meaning individuals who can't stop themselves from inappropriately or repeatedly commenting on or trying to intervene in institutional affairs can wreak havoc. I've seen it happen.

A common denominator for Trustees of all nonprofits, especially colleges and universities, is their role as symbols of institutional integrity, accountability, fiduciary responsibility, and oversight of the course and direction of the institution. One of the most important roles a Trustee will ever carry out is helping to select a leader who is worthy of the institution that the Trustees have dedicated themselves to and empowering that individual to help fulfill all the institutional potential that the Board, as well as previous Trustees and presidents, have set out to achieve. Having served on more than forty different nonprofit and institutional Boards during the course of my career, I was able to acquire first-hand knowledge of the culture of Boards of Trustees, their different styles and different modus operandi. Based on this experience, it seems clear to me that in the case of universities, where there are always endemic tensions coupled with the awesome responsibility to oversee not only the quality of education provided by the institution but also the physical well-being of thousands of students, there are always going to be problems—some of them very serious—that will thrust the institution into a spotlight for which it may not have been prepared. The political utterances of faculty members; exhibitions of "offensive" art; the "unruly" behavior of young men and women; student newspapers publishing "tasteless" articles; the performance—or "nonperformance"—of athletic teams; and dozens of other issues and actions on the part of any individual or segment of the "city-state" I previously alluded to can prompt anything from a minor uproar to a full-fledged crisis that can be devastating for all involved. When this happens, not only the president but the Trustees will find themselves in the eye of the hurricane. How well the storm is weathered will depend in large part on the insight, sensitivity, experience and cohesiveness of the Board and its members' relationship with the president. If the Trustees have chosen the right individual for the job of leading the institution, then chances are that after the crisis has been dealt with, the university, its leadership and its students will be stronger and perhaps even more appreciative of each other than they were before.

Delicate Balances

Throughout my years in academia, I came to appreciate not only that a university is extraordinarily complex but that, in many instances, it also has two separate cultures that coexist—sometimes uneasily. One is the academic culture, with its roots in medieval Europe and the Mediterranean. This culture is very proud of the fact that even though it tolerates the notion that a university must have a vertical organization, it still thinks of itself, in essence, as having a horizontal structure, where all the faculty members, regardless of "rank or privilege" are equal, because all are members of the commonwealth of learning. (In practice of course, the faculty is highly stratified, with its own peculiar hierarchy. The university professor, the tenured or untenured professor, the holder of an endowed chair, the lecturer, adjunct professor—each knows who is "above" and who is "below.") To these individuals, the president of the university is not really the boss: he or she is there to lead and serve them, and at the same time to be the shield that will protect them and their privileges from the encroachment or threat of outside forces. The president is also expected to create and maintain the atmosphere and conditions conducive to the free exchange of ideas and the unfettered pursuit of knowledge, as well as protect academic freedom. In addition, the president must oversee a second culture—an actual corporate culture—that is preoccupied not with academic issues but with all the financial, legal and fiduciary issues that governance entails and hence, is essential for the functioning of the university.

While many Trustees appreciate the complexity of universities and their academic culture, nevertheless, their language, their terms of reference and other touchstones are, by necessity and experience, corporate and managerial in nature. This is entirely natural, as Board members deal with the institution's investments and other financial matters, with infrastructure, contracts, management issues, legal obligations, etc., while also interacting with the development office, through which Trustees not only help the university raise funds, but also deal with alumni and governmental relations.

One of a university president's greatest challenges is how to manage the delicate balance between these two cultures—indeed, how to bridge the gap between them. Maintaining equilibrium can be particularly difficult if the president has joined corporate boards, which pay very well. [51] The chairs of those boards sometimes also serve on the university's board. This is often justified as "building bridges" between the university and the business world, and as necessary for the university's welfare. The fact that a university president serves on a corporate board may also be pointed to as an indicator of how much the corporate world respects the university president's abilities as a leader. Still, such arrangements may be fraught with problems. The university community, for example, may see conflict-of-interest questions arising if the university is doing business with the corporation of which the university president is a trustee. In such instances, merely abstaining from votes or not participating in business that involves the corporation and the university may not be enough to eliminate the appearance of conflict-of-interest issues. In addition, when a corporation faces a major legal or ethical problem, the university president who is a member of their board may get dragged into the situation even if he or she has nothing to do with it—and, by extension, that may also reflect poorly on the university itself. Furthermore, for a president to belong to many corporate boards may result in yet another dilemma: how not to be perceived as tilting towards the corporate culture in terms of maintaining the delicate balance between the worlds of business and academia that, as we have seen, is one of the university president's responsibilities. If a president has to belong to corporate boards for the purposes of income or reputation or influence, it is advisable for him or her to give equal time to service on nonprofit boards in order to balance both worlds. Of course, serving on any board should not prevent a president who is paid a full-time salary from devoting all the time, energy and attention necessary to the university that expects and deserves the president's best efforts. And he or she needs to be aware that a president who "moonlights" cannot apply strict rules to faculty not to do the same and hence, create a situation where both the president and faculty members are so engaged elsewhere that they are not serving the university to the best of their ability

The tension between the academic and corporate cultures creates all kinds of dilemmas. I've witnessed situations, for instance, where the president of a university tried to please both constituencie