Understandably, he gave himself a week's vacation between jobs, but after three weeks, his only contact with the dean's office on an administrative level was to maintain liaison with his secretary and to find a successor. His handling of this question provided an important gauge of Bok as an adminis-

trator and gave insight into how he will handle the role of President.

Through a letter from President Pusey to the Law School's Committee on Governance, Bok for the first time in Harvard history solicited formal aid from a student group in the selection of a University dean.

"Although the power of appointment rests in the President and Gellows," the letter said, "[I think] it is of the utmost importance that this power be exercised only after wide-ranging discussion and consultation..... Not the least among those whose views will be valued are those of students."

And indeed, Bok received a quasi-informative report from the committee after it had spent six weeks gathering student views about the dean-ship. In April, he met with the committee for nearly six hours before making a final decision on the dean.

Perhaps the true test of Bok's commitment to student opinion will come when he has to make a major appointment which has no heir apparent. It is only clear now that he is willing to break the Pusey mold of the past decade and at least give students the feeling that they have something to do with Harvard's decision-making process.

This case is a good indicator of the differences between Pusey and Bok. During his 17 years as President, Pusey conducted the business of the University and provided services to us various divisions-he assured the different schools buildings, funds and teaching posts. But as one dean put it early this month, "the University has been essentially devoid of central academic leadership not just in the late 60's, or even the late 50's, but for almost all of the past 20 years."

The Bok style is utterly different; his chief concern, as demonstrated by his memorandum to the Faculty, lies in the academic sphere. At the Law School, for instance, his pet projects were markedly academic: curriculum and grading reform; joint degree programs with the Business School, the Kennedy School of Government and the History Department; credit for clinical law programs; and programs for research in the fields of criminal law and law and education.

Having established this priority, it is consistent that Bok would recognize the need to be cognizant of everyone's interests-including students'-in deciding an important academic issue. Whereas Pusey recoiled from direct implication, much less contact, with students in making appointments, Bok welcomes the opportunity to sound out student sentiment.

It is likely that this type of central leadership-a combination of elan and drive-will be the hallmark of Bok's early years.

During his two and a half years as Law dean, Bok gained a remarkable degree of admiration from a highly critical group of students and faculty. As the successor to Griswold, a crusty figure as dean, Bok managed to usher the School into the 70's with a minimum of abrasions and an impressive list of accomplishments.

Foremost among these accomplishments, perhaps, was his relationship with the student body. Now, as President, he stresses again and again the need to maintain contact with students.

As dean, Bok weathered two particularly harrowing confrontations with students on issues of grade reform and disciplinary policy, but he was visibly shaken when a group of radical Law students disrupted a faculty meeting last Spring to protest the disciplining of five black students involved in sit-ins at University Hall.

Typically, Bok stood forthright on his original conclusion-the result of a long and uneasy period of indecisiveness for himself-that the students must be punished. His perseverance in a situation in which he felt he was right was highly predictable.

Bok survived each crisis without alienating students; at the same time he managed to maintain a considerable degree of harmony among the 60-odd members of the exacting Law Faculty. His survival was marked by a cautious and deliberate manner which hinged for success on countless meetings and conversations with students and faculty.