To: Chuck [Daly]

From: Robin [Schmidt]

Subject: Internal Relations

I wish this note were going to be better organized, better thought-out and shorter. It concerns some perceptions and ideas I've been thinking about for six months, but I have not yet given them enough attention so that I feel entirely comfortable with the conclusions. Nevertheless, because they fit in with what you're working on, here are some thoughts for whatever use you can make of them:

The suggestions in the memo are on target. In operation, they will help achieve the goal of better communications in the family.

Another major and more specific goal that should be aimed at is to somehow move the Administration closer to the faculty--particularly the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. I am certain we have a problem there, capable of becoming major. I am equally certain it will never be totally solved, but I do think the relationship can be bettered. I also feel Derek [Bok] will never achieve his major objectives without the active and majority help of the faculty.

First, let me list the problems as I perceive them, and as I think they are perceived by the faculty. (I make no comments on the validity of the faculty perceptions. In fact, many of them are so petty that they seem to me beneath consideration. In a way, that is perhaps why I have waited this long to try to take them out and look at them. Nevertheless, as some kindly philosopher or something once stated, truth is merely the perception of truth most of the time.)

First, and most important, there is Derek.

1. He is non-College. Nothing can ever change that, but it is a subtle but real differentiation made around here.

2. He is a professional dean, not a scholar as it is defined by tenured types in arts and sciences.

3. He is mighty young, and hasn't yet really won his spurs. I keep getting the feeling that [President emeritus Nathan M.] Pusey was viewed as a stern Puritan who could raise money and handle things. The fact that he failed in crucial times at the latter was the beginning of a malaise which was transferred to his successor.

4. He is "changing things." In a dyed-in-the-wool conservative place like Harvard, that alone is enough to cause torchlight parades. I refer to things like House tenure, reference to multi-disciplinary programs, new ideas for education. (The latter offers an interesting case: Derek purposely left Henry Rosovsky out of his annual report so Henry wouldn't have to take the rap but that omission when speaking of scholarly matters was viewed by many faculty as an unpardonable breach of whatever and a touch of high ego besides.)

An extension of Derek is his administration as embodied in the Mass Hall gang.

1. They, for the most part, are also non-College. Worse yet, they are also non-Harvard. What greater sin could one commit in Lilliputia?

2. They are too "corporate." I'm not sure what this means, but part of it is a vague reaction to viewing things solely in a business sense as opposed to being sensitive to the special concerns and needs of a scholarly operation. I'm sure we could cite several for-instances if need be.