And despite the inevitable conflicts between town and gown, Harvard's relationship with the city has improved dramatically.
The everyday quality of life in the Yard has a different feel to it, too. Computers and fax machines have woven themselves into the fabric of student life. The Mug 'n Muffin and other Harvard Square hangouts are gone, forced out by yuppification and high rents. The 18-year-old drinking age is a thing of the past; Harvard On-Line Information System (HOLLIS) and bar-coded books have come to the libraries. Student dining halls are equipped with microwave ovens.
But if life for students was different this decade, they had little to do with it.
The litany of student activism in the 1980s is a long one. Divestment from South Africa. CIA recruitment on campus, minority and women faculty hiring. ROTC on campus. Housing randomization.
A few of the issues were resolved. But the majority faded into semi-oblivion.
The Southern African Solidarity Committee, which in 1985 routinely drew hundreds of committed students to its rallies, was this fall able to muster less than 30 for a candlelight vigil on essentially the same issues.
And for other student movements, it has taken even less time to lose momentum. Two years ago, Stop Withholding Access Today (SWAT) was one of the most vocal organizations on campus. In the wake of a complaint filed by Lisa J. Schkolnick '88 to force the Fly Club to open its doors to women, students postered the campus, rallied outside club parties and called on the Undergraduate Council to denounce final club sexism.
Today, SWAT still exists, but organized campus protest against the final clubs is nowhere to be seen. Schkolnick has graduated, her complaint is in bureaucratic limbo, and the final clubs continue to punch every fall.
What Rosovsky recognized is that Harvard does not need to change. Harvard can simply wait. The governing boards do not need to accede to anyone's demands. In four years, the crusading first-year activists of today will have graduated, and their successors will have moved on to fresh territory. The disgruntled associate professors denouncing the inequities of the University's tenure system will have fallen victim to it, and moved on to more prestigious jobs at less prestigious institutions.
In the meantime, Harvard can keep itself perfectly busy just being Harvard.
"To make a great institution continue to be great appealed to me so much that I have little difficulty deciding that I ought to do it," a newly-appointed Dean of the Faculty A. Michael Spence said in 1984, explaining his decision to accept the post.
And as the '80s draw to a close, Harvard's fundamental goal--to remain "great"--has not altered.
As the University haggles over the final details in a planned $2 billion fundraising drive, Bok and other top administrators say they are trying to steer Harvard toward the future. They want to broaden the University's international focus, to strengthen undergraduate education, to maintain Harvard's infrastructure and to bolster the size of the faculty.
These priorities describe a Harvard that is bigger and broader. A Harvard that is stronger. Not, however, a Harvard that is fundamentally different from the Harvard of today.
The truly substantive changes between the Harvard of 1989 and that of 1979 pale in comparison to the previous 10 years, or the 10 before that. The commotion of the past 10 years, the new policy initiatives and the new deans, the recurring waves of student protest seemed important at the time. But in retrospect, the 1980s seem to have made the minutest of marks on the pages of Harvard history.
If the past decade has a lesson, it is that traditions die hard at the nation's oldest institution of higher learning. Even at Harvard, changes are inevitable, but not many and not often.
Harvard is forever.