In a tradition which has included such noted anti-semites as President A. Lawrence Lowell, (1877), Bok is also unusual for his liberal views. This political outlook, which some say has grown tarnished in recent years, was in part an outgrowth of his years at the Law School, where as dean he personally intervened in construction projects to prevent alleged discrimination against Black workers.

If Pusey is, as the former president recently remarked in an interview, the "last old-time college president," then Bok is surely first among the new.

Yet if he is a corporatizer and consensus builder, Bok certainly does not fit the image of corporate culture. When he first set up shop as President with his three children and wife Sissela, the daughter of the late Nobel-prize winners Gunnar Myrdal and Alva Myrdal, Massachusetts Hall was more like Camelot than a boardroom.

Bok's personal habits are less regal. He can often be seen tooling around Cambridge in a repainted Volkswagen Beatle--a gift of his mother--and picking up trash as he walks through the Yard. The first President not to reside in the official president's house at 17 Quincy Street, Bok lives instead off campus at Elmwood, formerly the residence of the dean of the Faculty. And while some of his administrators are taking breakfast at the Faculty Club, Bok prefers a hale early morning coffee at the Wursthaus in the Square. "They all know him there," says Rosovsky.

Tinsel Town

"If Hollywood were to typecast a Harvard president, they would find someone who was tweedier and spoke with a Harvard accent," observes Rosovsky.

Coming out of the 350th Anniversary Celebration and a successful $359 million campaign, Bok is at a crossroads in his presidency. He is firmly established as one the leading figures in American higher education--the first according to U.S. News & World Report--and has lobbied extensively for student financial aid in Washington.

Bok's future reflects his prominence. Administrators predict that fresh back from a sabbatical, Bok is ready for up to four more years at Harvard's helm. Prognosticators here and elsewhere say that he may be in line for an ambassadorship similar to that of retiring Yale President Kingman Brewster took a post at the Court of St. James. Others say he may take the helm of an educational foundation as Nathan M. Pusey '28 did when he left Harvard to head the Mellon Foundation.

Others, forseeing a benevolent administration, eye the nation's Supreme Court in the belief that Bok's legal talents may serve him well beyond Harvard.