On national issues, Bok is considered solidly liberal, strongly opposed to the Vietnam War and the Law School, he was far ahead of the College in hiring minority construction workers.

Bok fully intends to speak out on public issues. In January he said, "I certainly think a President ought to be able to speak out as an individual on any issue he thinks important."

The cautious manner, however, is still evident. He continued, "It's difficult to inform oneself adequately on the wide range of public issues. One isn't going to be listened to for very long, if at all, unless he speaks with authority, from factual knowledge."

Bok's strongest public stands have come in his opposition to the nomination of G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court (When he organized Law deans across the country against the nomination) and last Spring when he traveled to Washington to join several other Harvard professors protesting President Nixon's invasion of Cambodia.

Few people were surprised when the choice for President narrowed finally to two men from inside the University: Bok and John Dunlop. Indeed, as Corporation member Albert M. Nickerson '25 mused in November, it would take an outsider "three years to settle into the job, and by that time he could be hamstrung by the rapid pace of events."

The rapid pace of events as included more nadirs than high points since 1969, the last year in which Pusey exercised any real power over the Faculty. Between Bok and Dunlop, Bok was perhaps the obvious choice.

An outsider in his own right (he is the first Harvard President since the seventeenth century not to graduate from the College), Bok was younger by 15 years but still a respected scholar. He is fresh to the mainstream of Harvard politics and infighting, but he brings with him an awareness of the different constituencies to which a President must respond.

Bok talks of "beginning to trim the job to manageable dimensions"; his conception of his role in modernizing the University is "trying to influence the agenda." Already it is apparent that his primary concerns are academic. One of his highest priorities is achieving-and maintaining-contact with the student body.

Clearly, Derek Bok will not manipulate, or try to manipulate, the concentrated power base President Pusey developed over the past two decades. He fully intends to distribute he work load of Harvard's vast financial increases and turn himself to education.

Whether or not he can do this is another matter. Financial burdens, another student upheaval, or pressure from outside the University could easily subvert his intentions. He could end up five years from now repeating the sentiment Archibald Cox voiced recently that "you get to feel like a mother hen about this place after so many mornings waling brought the Yard at three o'clock, and you just want to pay back some of the debt you owe."

But Bok is in it now; there is no room, or time, for second thoughts. Perhaps the only consolation is that his professorship at the Law School will still be there 15 years from now if he wants it. He might just take it if his impression-founded in a conversation with Yale's Kingman Brewster and Chicago University President Edward Levi-is correct that "some [university] presidents enjoy their work... it is not necessarily a form of intellectual and academic suicide."