While a student at Howard-he received a J. D. degree there in 1968-Leonard worked as a research assistant to the dean of the law school, as a law clerk in a Neighborhood Legal Service Project, and as assistant to the President at the Washington Technical Institute.
Leonard began a career in business before going over full-time to law, studying at Savannah State College, Morchouse College andthe graduate business school at Atlanta University.
He is a trustee of the Fund for Peace, a member of the Executive Council of the Greenville Clark Institute for Enforceable World Law, and a life member of the NAACP.
Leonard also serves on several national committees concerned with the progress of minority groups, and he advises on minority issues for the Association of American Law Schools and the Law School Admissions Test Council. Locally, he is a member of the Newton Fair Housing Committee.
Presumably, Leonard and Farber will handle all future incidents involving hiring practices of the University, community housing projects instigated by Harvard,-and-community-crises like that at Muddy Pond in Jamaica Plain where two small black children drowned recently.
They will also advise President-designate Bok on policies and strategies involving Harvard's position in such matters, and will help map out the direction the University will pursue within the community.
Certainly the most crucial of the three appointments announced yesterday is that of Champion as the vice-president in change of the University's clouded financial situation.
Champion, who is seven years Bok's senior, is a fellow Stanford graduate although he studied here in 1956-57 as a Nieman Fellow in Journalism and again in 1966-67 as a Fellow at the Institute of Politics in the John F. Kennedy School of Government.
At Minnesota, Champion presently manages a budget of $250 million which covers five campuses, 51,000 students and 4000 full-time faculty members. But while he may be moving down in terms of numbers of students by coming to Harvard, Champion will inherit a budget of equal proportions-at nearly $200 million-and 1000 more faculty.
Before taking his present post at Minnesota. Champion was director of finance for the state of California (there he was in charge of a paltry $5 billion budget) and served as chairman of the State Public Works Board and the State Lands Commission.
Champion was for a brief period director of the $1 billion planning and renewal program for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, and he has served on two Presidential task forces on the role of the university in urban society and on the reorganization of the Federal government.
He also was a consultant to the Kerner Commission on methods for making local government more responsive and accountable.
Champion started out in political journalism on the Milwaukee Journal and continued political reporting for the San Francisco Chronicle. His next step was to state government in California, then he later moved to Boston and finally the University of Minnesota.