"I don't dream at night. I really go from one year to the next without having dreams." --President Bok

"I would rather not talk about great successes," President Bok says when asked what he believes are his most significant achievements at Harvard. "I don't like reading about people who talk of their great successes. One person's triumph is another man's pitfall. Success is a very ambiguous thing."

"My favorite author?" Bok asks. "I really don't have a favorite author. I try to read a lot of things. For six or seven years, I would read a book club selection every month. But I appreciate Joseph Conrad's more obscure works."

President Bok starts to laugh at the growing list of open-ended questions, until the hearty laughter dominates the conversation.

Why do you think they selected you as President of Harvard?

"God, I don't know," he replies. "But they must have made some sort of evaluation. I don't know what it was. Frankly, I wasn't even terribly taken with the whole idea. I had just started up with the Law School."

A moment of exasperation. "What are all these questions you're asking me," Bok wonders aloud. "Each one of these could take an entire morning to answer. There are no simple one-sentence answers, that you're looking for, to these complex questions."

* * *

Not many students get to know Derek Curtis Bok.

Despite the visibility of his office, Bok remains an enigma in the eyes of most students at Harvard. They see him during Freshman Week, at basketball games. We invited him to a wine and cheese party in a dormitory room--and he came.

But few students have come into sufficiently close contact with the president to evaulate his personality and moral values. His private personna is obscured by the headlines that portray him only as a policy maker, the man who interprets injustices and to whom we address our grievances.

To most, Bok is distant. To some, he is too deliberative, a hypocrite perhaps. But it is impossible to pigeonhole Bok, for he refuses to give himself away.

This is a man who, on a Sunday afternoon, prefers a walk in the woods with his wife to sitting on a corporate board. He envies his daughter for being able to tour India. His friends call him "ruthlessly competitive" on the tennis court. As he makes his way across the Yard, he bends over to pick up pieces of litter.

Professionally, Bok is known--indeed criticized in some circles-for his reserve and caution, characteristics that seem to melt over into the way he deals with inquiries about his personal life. His close friend say it is for a very good reason: Bok, they say, is an intensely private person.

Bok's personality appears out of synch with the intensely public demands of his office, the head of the richest and most famous university in the United States. Despite his predilection to shun the spotlight, Bok's presidential tasks continually bring him into the public eye: from ensuring the quality of the Faculty, to serving as a spokesman for all of higher education, to indefatigibly hitting the road in search of the donations upon which Harvard survives.