"A person who didn't care about what this stuff was about would write a report and let it go at that," says Simon, who worked with Bok in the Army. "That's what most people in the Pentagon did. But he persevered with a moral passion and changed a lot of bad rules."
Another tennis partner and social companion, David A. Aloian '49, speculates that Bok's attitudes stem in part from the ethos cultivated in his family and his father, Curtis, who in a well-known book, argued vehemently against the death penalty.
"There's a moral passion in that book that had to rub off any children that sat around the Bok table," says Aloian, the director of the Harvard Alumni Association.
When asked to speak of the values he holds dear to heart, Bok speaks of the importance of community service, a dedication to helping cure society's ills, and the necessity to address ethical issues.
"It is my profound belief that we must ultilize our talents and obligations to help people who are less fortunate," says Bok. "Honesty also means a great deal to me. It's a value that I hold deeply and try to instill in my children."
Translated into his performance on the job, Bok's morality leads him eschew flag-waving in favor of carefully--some say sluggishly--thrashing out the major points on all issues, whether it be divestiture or deciding whether to grant tenure to a young scholar Bok, friends say feels constrained from fully putting into practice all his ethical beliefs by the institutional paramaters of his job.
The best example of this is probably his steadfast refusal to divest, a position which infuriates opponents but which he arrived at after long and careful deliberation.
"I'm sure that I've spent many more hours on South Africa than any of those people who are criticizing me for it," says Bok. "Symbolic gestures are quickly forgotten, but in the long run, Harvard's own academic freedom would be sacrificed if we divested."
"I think that Derek has to be realistic in all that he does," says Weinreb. "He's not an ideologue or a banner waver. In a University of ideologues, I guess he does look like a pragmatist."