"At that time, the idea of consulting everyconstituent imaginable was a fairly new idea forHarvard," says Judith B. McLaughlin, a lecturer atthe School of Education who is co-author ofRiesman's book on presidential searches. "It was asea-change in American higher education."

Eventually, the Corporation released two listsof finalists, one with 69 names and one with 23,to select committees of professors and students inan effort to ensure consensus. The lists includednames from both inside and outside academia, fromboth Harvard and elsewhere. Among the names on thelonger list was that of future Secretary of StateGeorge P. Shultz, who was then director of theOffice of Management and Budget.

The Corporation's final choice ensured achanged agenda for the coming decades. Bok was alawyer, his pragmatism a stark contrast to Pusey'smoralistic world view. When protesters hadoccupied the Law School library, Bok didn't callin the police. Instead, he brought them donuts andcoffee, staying late into the night to discusstheir demands.

Change Is the Only Constant

The sharp change in direction was nothing new.Indeed, each man to occupy the president's officein this century has created a University markedlydifferent from his predecessor's, Riesman says.

For instance, the selection of Lowell in 1909represented a departure from theelective-oriented, laissez-faire educationchampioned by the previous president, Charles W.Eliot (Class of 1853). Although the popular Eliothad garnered almost universal acclaim for thesystem he had installed during his 40-year tenure,Lowell did not hesitate to implement drasticreforms.

Lowell drove indolent undergraduates out oftheir Gold Coast apartments and into the red-brickHouses he constructed along the Charles. Hetoughened the academic requirements, creating asystem of tutorials and forcing students in theCollege to choose fields of concentration.

But although many of Lowell's reforms remainimportant components of today's University, hissuccessor, too, changed Harvard's course. When theCorporation selected chemist James B. Conant '14in 1933, it decreed a future of modernlaboratories and graduate programs.

"Conant's model was the German researchuniversity, and during Lowell's later years, hedidn't hide his criticism of the tutorial system,"Riesman says. "It seemed to him British,Oxford-common-room, soft, too colloquial, tooconversational."

At 41, Conant was Harvard's first 20th-centurypresident who had grown up in the 20th century,and during his tenure, he did much to dispel theBrahmin tone of the Lowell administration. Heencouraged admissions officers to venture beyondNew England and recruit promising students fromaround the country. On the faculty, Conantwelcomed not just gentleman humanists, but alsothe scientists and mathematicians who pioneeredthe development of the atom bomb.

But though his term was characterized by thehealthy growth of Harvard's facilities, facultiesand international reputation, Conant left theUniversity at a moment of crisis. In 1953, highereducation was under siege from Sen. JosephMcCarthy and his red-hunting cohorts, who hadparticularly targeted what they called "theKremlin on the Charles." Even Conant had beenbrowbeaten into declaring his opposition to hiringknown Communists.

As it would in 1970, the Corporation sought apresident who could lead Harvard through a periodin which its mission was threatened by thenational political climate. Its choice was Pusey,who as president of a small college in McCarthy'sown state of Wisconsin had been one of thesenator's most unwavering foes.

In addition, Corporation members saw thesoftspoken, devoutly Christian classicist as a manwho would bring with him qualities that had beenlacking in Conant's impersonal researchuniversity.

"Nathan Pusey represented a return, in somerespects, to a pre-Eliot Harvard," Riesman says."He came out of the humanities, developed theDivinity School and supported Memorial Church. Hiswas a Harvard of Houses, a Harvard of tutors, aHarvard of conversation."

A National Office