Another Harvard administrator who sprinted through the ranks in Bokian fashion is Rosovsky's successor as dean, A. Michael Spence. But Spence, a Princeton graduate, is not tied either to Harvard or to academia, according to his friend and colleague Richard J. Zeckhauser, professor of Political Economy.
"If he takes a further administrative post, it's only 50-50 to be in academia, and only 50-50 to be at Harvard." Zeckhauser, who teaches a course on decision making under uncertainty, speculated in February. "I think he'll be president of Princeton. That's my best guess.
Bok's history at Harvard includes a repid ascent up the ladder--full law professor at 30, Dean of the Law School at 37, and appointment to president on January 11, 1971--all by the time he was 40.
He came into the office at what is now called by many professors the "Time of Troubles," while anti-war agitation still simmered, two years after the famous University Hall take-over.
Bok had already dealt with student rebellion during his Law School dean ship, and his success there no doubt figured in his appointment.
As one Bok Legend has it, a small group of students took over the Law School library one night in 1969, to protest not the Vietnam War on any such topic, but the school's grading system.
Bok had been in office less than a year. But when he was called at home well after midnight to come talk with the students, he made sure to bring enough coffee and doughnuts for everyone. "I want to thank you all for coming here to show your concern for the Law School," Bok said when he climbed on a table to address them.
If Bok lacked Pusey's remoteness from students, he also broadened the president's circle of confidants, reworking the Mass Hall bureaucracy to include four new vice presidents instead of the one Pusey had. That, according to Calkins, will prove to be one of the most important legacies of the Bok era.
"When he came in, you have no idea how primitive the administration of the University was," says Calkins, who often served eloquently as the point man for Pusey and the Corporation during the troubled years of 1969 and 1970.
Bok has also overseen several major projects during his 13 years--the Radcliffe merger/nonmerger, the growth of the Kennedy School of Government, the $302 million Medical Area Total Energy Plant nightmare and the $350 million Harvard Campaign, which has seven weeks to drum up $20 million for its goal.
The former Stanford basketball star and clarinet player was reluctant for the first seven or eight years to use the pulpit of the Harvard presidency to address the nation. But with the publication of his 1982. "Beyond the Ivory Lower: Social Responsibilities of the Modern University," annual reports on the legal and medical professions and other public ruminations on different topics. Bok is widely considered the prime spokesman for higher education in America, challenged perhaps only by Notre Dame's President, the Rev. Theodore Hessberg. "I have the highest possible admiration for Bok," says Yale President A. Bartlett Giamatti. "He has been a superior leader of not just Harvard but higher education as a whole--he really works tirelessly for all of us."
"The president of Harvard is always in a unique position to exert leadership, and he has certainly done that," says Robert Atwell, acting director of the American Council on Education, who gives Bok special credit for his work in pushing the NCAA to toughen academic standards for student athletes. "For him to do that is really an act of citizenship, because Harvard doesn't have any of these problems."