Even from his yellow Elmwood Street mansion, where Harvard says he is ensconced, the president is still trying to maintain control over the University.
A source close to the president says Rudenstine has written many personal letters to members of the University community.
Rudenstine's wife Angelica read from a letter written by the president to an assembly of University guests at Friday's opening of the conference on Latin American studies.
"I greatly regret that I am unable to be with you," Angelica said the president wrote. "I have looked forward to this conference for many months, and I am fully with you in spirit."
But the question is the state, and location, of the president's flesh. One week after Harvard announced Rudenstine's medical leave, there has been no confirmation from the president that he is, in fact, at home. Repeated phone calls to Rudenstine's immediately family have gone unreturned.
While she made some remarks at a dinner Friday, Rudenstine's wife, Angelica Zander Rudenstine has been largely inaccessible. Security guards blocked two Crimson reporters who tried to approach Angelica Rudenstine at a latin American Studies conference on Saturday.
Rudenstine's official spokesperson is Carnesale. One of the acting president's responsibilities is to fill in for Rudenstine at appointments he will miss during his absence so that the president will not be overwhelmed when he returns.
University officials say Rudenstine will maintain close contact with Carnesale.
"Al Carnesale says he has been on daily touch with President Rudenstine," Rowe says. "He spent a hour with him at Elmwood."
There, the University says, the president is undergoing diagnostic tests, What those tests are, and what they will determine, is anyone's guess.
The University says the tests are being performed on an outpatient basic. The goal is to determine the cause of Rudenstine's exhaustion.
It doesn't take a doctor, however, to tell that Neil Rudenstine's there years as president have been grueling.
"When results of these studies are available a more certain programers will be possible," Carnesale will at the press conference Lost Monday. "It is likely that the president will be on leave for a matter of weeks of longer."