There should have been two celebrations in Boston last week. After months of intense searches, both Harvard and Brandeis universities decided whom they wanted as their next presidents. Harvard’s choice, former Princeton provost Neil Rudenstine, happily accepted. But Brandeis officials had to endure two humiliating turndowns–from their first choice, Stuart Eizenstat, former domestic-policy adviser in the Carter administration, and their second, Duke University senior vice president Joel Fleishman. Now, members of the search committee have to worry they’ll never find anyone who wants the job.
Once the golden pinnacle of a distinguished academic career, the job of university president is rapidly losing its luster. A third of the top jobs at the 58 schools belonging to the Association of American Universities–premier research schools–have changed hands in the past two years. Sometimes the partings are amicable; Harvard’s Derek Bok was simply ready to retire last June. And sometimes they’re messy; former Brandeis president Evelyn Handler resigned under the duress of, among other things, a $6 million budget deficit.
A growing number of former presidents say the job isn’t worth the hassle. They’re fed up with truculent trustees, an ivory tower of debt, dwindling government funding, departmental fiefdoms and thought police on the left, right and in between. “I just got tired of the emotional demands of being chancellor,” says Ira Michael Heyman, who recently quit after 10 years at the University of California, Berkeley. “I sleep a lot better these days.”
There have, of course, been worse times. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, presidents toppled under pressure from protesters. Then, at least, educators believed the unrest would eventually end. Today the campuses are fairly quiet. But the problems are far more intractable. “We now have embedded issues that have no half-life,” says David Gardner, president of the nine-campus University of California. “They gnaw and eat at the credibility and the capacity of any president to deal with them, except in the short term.”
Perhaps the biggest problem is money. The heads of both private and public universities are fighting over the same shrinking federal dollar while trying to keep tuition down and attract the best students. These days, running a university is “a combination of being a CEO and an elected politician–without the powers of command of a CEO and without the steady constituency of the politician,” says Robert M. Rosenzweig, president of the Association of American Universities. “It’s about the hardest job in the United States.”
Such hyperbole, as even some presidents will admit, can get to be a bit much. “It’s a profession where we’re notorious for feeling sorry for ourselves and always feeling beleaguered,” says University of Massachusetts president Joseph Duffey, who will take over American University in July. Still, the toll can be quite devastating. Consider the recent fate of the presidents of Arizona’s three major institutions. On Feb. 7, Northern Arizona State University president Eugene M. Hughes filed for divorce after 36 years of marriage, blaming the “all-consuming demands and frequent travel required by the job.” On Feb. 12, outgoing University of Arizona president Henry Koffler went into the hospital for a quadruple coronary bypass. And on Feb. 24, Arizona State University president Lattie Coor suffered a heart attack after only 13 months on the job.
In view of such agonies, recruiting college presidents has become an art form. More and more schools are hiring headhunters to check out candidates, says Judith Block McLaughlin, a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who coauthored a recent book on how colleges choose presidents. The headhunters turn up candidates who might not necessarily find their way into the pool, she says, and they also add badly needed professionalism to the search.
Even mighty Harvard had to proceed gingerly. Several likely candidates asked to have their names withdrawn from consideration, says Judith Richards Hope, a member of the selection committee. Rudenstine himself had to be carefully wooed. Four years ago he pulled out of the race for the presidency of Princeton although he was the leading contender. A few months ago, after he made Harvard’s list of 14 finalists, the 56-year-old English Renaissance scholar was asked if he would accept the post if it were offered. He pondered the question for 10 days before saying yes. He was asked the same question again as the search narrowed; it took him a week to reply.
“A good deal of thought went into what sort of bird we need in this aviary at the moment,” says David Riesman, a Harvard emeritus sociologist and McLaughlin’s coauthor. As a white male with an elite education (Princeton undergraduate, Rhodes scholar, Harvard Ph.D.), Rudenstine doesn’t exactly break the mold, but he is Harvard’s first president of Jewish and Roman Catholic ancestry. His 77-year-old mother, a Catholic, is a waitress; his Jewish father, now dead, was a prison guard. Says Hope, “You need someone with enormous energy, a brilliant scholar, who has done undergraduate teaching, who gives wonderful testimony before Congress, who is a fabulous fund raiser…God is not good enough to be a university president.”
Given the frightful agenda, it’s not surprising that university presidents look to gunfights for metaphors to describe the nature of their jobs. Last fall Stanford president Donald Kennedy, reflecting on his 10 years at the university, described his “silver-bullet theory” of leadership. “You start out with 10 silver bullets and over the course of years, you fire them all,” he says. Kennedy now faces charges that Stanford overcharged the federal government for research projects, using the money for other expenses–including antiques in the president’s house. It’s the most serious controversy of his administration, but not the only one. Over the past decade, Kennedy has had to hose down fires over everything from the contents of Western civilization courses to the band’s performance at football games. If he finishes the year with no new scandals, Kennedy may still have a few silver bullets left. If not, Palo Alto will be looking for a new Lone Ranger.
