If the Harvard Corporation ever wanted to "get' the History Department, it could do it. It could block the department's appointments and refuse to OK a budget with any funding. But they would never do it.

The Corporation is Harvard's highest administrative organ--save the largely ceremonial Board of Overseers--but instead of getting involved in the day-to-day affairs of many different areas of the University, it concentrates on long range planning and only takes direct responsibility for major financial matters.

In many ways the Corporation is unique among university governing boards. It is the smallest of any major university and it meets more often than any other, the members taking an active role in many areas of Harvard policy. However, because it tends to deal with broad issues, most of the University community has little contact with it.

President Bok is head of the board, but he tends to work with the other members very much as an equal. He consults with them, and the group decides major issues by consensus. While earlier boards up until President Eliot's time often were sharply divided, no one can remember the Corporation having a single vote in at least 30 years. However, although it hasn't happened in recent memory, all seven Corporation members agree that if there were a major division on the board the President's side would win, even if he stood alone. But the reason they say there have been no such splits is that they avoid making a decision until they can work around each member's concerns to reach that consensus.

Only the Corporation can own property or spend Harvard's billions, although it may authorize others to do so. The Corporation must approve all appointments within the University, except for one of their number, which are authorized by the Board of Overseers. And only on matters sufficiently important as to constitute a new University "order" is the Corporation expected to consult with the Overseers.

However, in practice most of this authority is delegated. Harvard's well-known decentralized administrative structure grew from the Corporation's own initiatives. Almost all academic matters, including discipline, are delegated to the faculties. Only when a matter begins to involve the outside world does the Corporation begin to play a major role. And even there it delegates much of the work to Harvard's five vice presidents.

So what does it do, and why is it so important?

The largest responsibility is financial, with two parts to the job. The first is overseeing the endowment. In many ways the Corporation is more concerned with the class of 1995 than the class of 1984, or even the class of 1988. The class of '88 will be here in September, and the Corporation wants to make sure that the same resources and opportunities will be available five 10, or even 20 years from now. To manage Harvard's investments the Corporation founded the Harvard Management Company 10 years ago and through it keeps the University rich. (See accompanying article.)

The second part involves insuring the financial well-being of every department of the University. Every faculty, museum, and department must pass its budget through the Corporation. But again, the Corporation does not examine the budgets solely to make sure all the numbers add up. Every dean and vice president develops a five-year plan, and the budgets must all conform to that plan. "If the faculty comes to us and says it wants two new professors, the first thing we say is 'all right, where's the dough?'" says Francis H. Burr '35, who served on the Corporation for 28 years until 1982.

Deans and vice presidents say their meetings with the Corporation are always cooperative, never confrontational. Deans receive much latitude to plan the future of their faculties and then present the plans to the Corporation for approval. Usually the Corporation keeps abreast of the planning, and when they consider the move they usually look at it from two perspectives.

First, they ask, is this the best thing for the department involved and the University as a whole? In general the dean is supposed to have already considered this, and the proposal will have been discussed as part of the long range planning, but if the issue is controversial it may get a great deal of deliberation. "Most of the discussion comes when something is not in line with the general strategy," says Vice President for Administration Robert H. Scott.

The Corporation also looks at the process which has led to the proposal, Fellows say. "They do not want to second guess the substantive judgement of the people who have specialized knowledge, whose job it is to reach those decisions," says Vice President and General Counsel Daniel Steiner '54.

The best example of this policy comes in the appointment of a tenured professor. Although it happened routinely over 100 years ago and is rumored to have occurred once or twice in the first half of this century, the Corporation today never vetoes tenure appointments--although it does have the power to do so. What it does do is critique the selection process. "[We] will frequently say, 'it looks to us as if, in connection with this appointment, there has not been enough attention paid to appointing a woman or minority group person, or, there hasn't been a hard enough search to insure that we're getting the best of the young people,'" says Corporation member Hugh M. Calkins '45.

Occasionally the Corporation must deal with a specific policy question which cuts across faculty boundaries. Calkins and Burr, who were both on the Corporation during the student upheavals of the late 1960s, say much could have been avoided if the University had adopted its decentralized structure earlier and been more responsive to community concerns. Calkins says that if Harvard then had a vice president in charge of community relations, many of the issues of the day either would not have developed or could have been dealt with much more easily.

Burr agrees, and he says that while the events of 1969 posed the toughest problems of his time on the board, they did not bring about the sweeping changes in Harvard's administration they are often given credit for. He says an administrative reshuffling was needed anyway and that they just accelerated the process. Most issues and decisions are still tackled in the same careful style. "I don't think a hell of a lot was accomplished by all that churning around," he says.