Others view the letters as an attempt by Bok to cover up his errors by promoting a dialogue on "deeper issues." In his fifth letter, for example, Bok argues that the recent case of Arnold C. Harberger and the offer to head the Harvard Institute of International Development masks greater issues. "One of the classic errors that people make is that they look at the specific situation in cost-benefit terms," Bok says. "It's not just a question of trying to keep Harberger off campus. The real issue is what if everyone who feels as strongly as you do about Harberger acts the same way? There are people who really feel passionately in ways that would scare the pants off those students. Once you legitimize the idea that it's okay to get in there and try to distort the normal appointments process by pushing your point of view across, you're going to get a lot of people pushing with considerably greater batallions than the students have."

Yet the president's critics say that despite his insistence that he would not appoint somebody who would damage the institute's ability to carry out its functions, Harberger would have done just that. Worse yet, they argue, Bok's letter, "Reflections on Academic Freedom," seems to contradict his earlier positions and split moral hairs. While arguing against cost-benefit analysis in the Harberger case, he argued for it in last spring's letters. In his "Reflection on Boycotts," Bok said that when universities refuse "to take collective stands or exert economic pressure, [they] are guided by a belief that any benefits to be achieved by such actions will often be out-weighed by the resulting risks to academic functions." "At times," says one Faculty member, "Bok gets so caught up in his own rhetoric that he fails to realize what he's saying."

If the letters have damaged Bok's reputation among some students and Faculty members, his other public actions--stemming from his belief in the University's independence--have garnered him rave reviews from enthusiastic colleagues and the Washington education community. Bok has argued consistenly and effectively about the dangers of private institutions' increasing dependence on the federal government. As Stanford president Richard Lyman explains, Bok has "raised problems we didn't have in the last 15 years," warning--as he did in a recent article--that government "can easily clasp education in a deadly embrace that stifles its education and vigor."

Although some federal bureaucrats view Bok and his effective, hard-driving core of government relations experts as arrogant, self-serving and patronizing--trying to have their cake, federal funds, and eat it, too--others see it as a defense of vital academic principles. And everyone agrees that, after Bok decided to develop an office of government affairs, he did it very well, developing what Lyman and Washington experts call "the most effective staff in this country."

Bok's other pet issue--keeping the Central Intelligence Agency activities on campus above board--has strengthened his reputation and Harvard's, in the words of Thomas A. Bartlett, president of the American Association of Universities, "as notable bulwarks of academic freedom." Bok developed the first and only set of guidelines regulating intelligence agency activities on campus, and has been a vocal spokesman for these freedoms, consistenly challenging CIA director Stansfield Turner's rebuttals. In the midst of his concern for federal problems, however, Bok, one community leader says, has ignored problems closer to home. "While he accuses the CIA of running rampant on campus, he forgets that Harvard is running rampant over Cambridge, and sort of pats the city on the head when it's necessary." It is, as one might expect after a period of almost a decade, a mixed record.

***

When he took over as president of Harvard, Derek Bok said he expected to remain in Mass Hall for about ten to 14 years. Today, he is less sure, certain that he will stay to see the fund drive through--at least another three years--but declining to make a more definite statement. Friends wonder what Bok will do when he leaves Cambridge, still a relatively young man but without an academic career; Bok himself is unsure. Meanwhile, Bok continues to insist that he derives the daily "enthusiasm and spontaneity" which he feels being the president of the nation's oldest university needs. "Its affairs matter to me and are endless in their variety," he says. Why? Bok shrugs his shoulders. "Because Harvard is Harvard."