Sometimes just watching President Neil L. Rudenstine can be excruciating.

In his office, perched on the tiny, straight-backed wooden chair he uses to protect himself against a chronic, painful back problem, Harvard's president twists and contorts his body into positions only meant for acrobats.

During conversations at the end of the day, Rudenstine will rise, slightly stooped because of the ache in his back, and wander around his spacious Massachusetts Hall office, absent-mindedly searching for his glasses.

Since being named president in March 1991, Rudenstine has spent more than three years being forced into all manner of uncomfortable positions. He has been forced to handle difficulty diversity issues. He has struggled to keep up with a torrid fundraising pace. And he has been forced to make more high-profile appointments than the typical new president.

Rudenstine does not face the same accusations Bill Clinton does. He is not forever changing shape. But his management style is characterized more by thorough pragmatism than principle.

Finding pragmatic solutions takes time, and time takes its toll. Since the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Rudenstine's first-floor office in Massachusetts Hall has been empty. The Corporation, Harvard's most powerful governing board, announced a week ago that Rudenstine was suffering from "severe fatigue and exhaustion of an unknown origin." He is taking a medical leave of absence that will last at least several weeks.

The University maintains that Rudenstine, a type-A personality with a tendency toward workaholism, has simply toiled too hard.

"It's not atypical from him to start his day at 7:30 or 8 [a.m.] and either conclude his day at home doing work or attending an event, function or dinner," says James H. Rowe '73, vice president for government, community and public affairs.

On Rudenstine's last working day, Monday, November 21, he met with a number of deans, Provost (and now Acting President) Albert Carnesale, visited the Harvard Foundation and had a development meeting, according to a source close to the president.

University officials assert, however, that it was not only the twists and turns and juggling of Rudenstine's busy schedule that led to the fatigue.

"It's the intensity with which you work as well as the number of hours," Carnesale said at last Monday's press conference, where the leave of absence was announced.

Some students win high marks through brilliance. Others grind out good grades. Rudenstine is very smart, but at root he is a grind. That way of working has made him, by most accounts, a very successful manager of low-profile issues like the University deficit.

But his grand vision of a more integrated university seems to have gathered little momentum. And on the national scale, the president's voice is barely audible on larger education issues. After more than three years, he has few grand accomplish. ments to show for his hard work.

Smoother Sailing

It was a nice honeymoon. In the fall of 1991, Harvard's first-years greeted the young, enthusiastic new president with a banner hanging from Weld Hall. "We Love Our Neil, from the Class of 1995," it said.

The leaves have changed. Today, by decree of Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III, no banners hang on the walls of first-year dorms.

Instead, the appearance of chaos seems to have draped Massachusetts Hall. The central administration, and Rudenstine specifically, have been accused by numerous groups of being unable to make quick, effective, unambiguous decisions.

The result in recent weeks has been a president who seemed increasingly tired, dejected and short-tempered. Rudenstine also appeared to have lost significant weight since his appointment three springs ago.

Rudenstine's vision for Harvard originally revolved around providing more centralization to an extremely decentralized University. The trick was to somehow convince Harvard's various graduate schools--its proverbial "tubs"--to share space and funds more often.

In October 1991, the president called for the creation of the office of the provost during his first official address to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

"We have very little ability to plan centrally on an academic basis," Rudenstine said at the time. "The president is the only University-wide academic officer. Just one. Just me."

Rudenstine had served as provost at Princeton, and he saw the position as serving as both a right-hand man and a mediator between the schools.

At the time, critics denounced the president for adding to the University's bureaucracy.

Rudenstine countered that the provost would be a "cloned president," responsible for academic planning. He said individual deans would still report directly to him, not to the provost.

But even the decision to resurrect the position was plagued with problems. Rudenstine handpicked Wells Professor of Political Economy Jerry R. Green to carry out his vision.

This past April, though, Green mysteriously and without warning announced he would leave the central administration to return to a position in the Faculty. The provost had reportedly quarreled with Rudenstine over various issues, including the president's management style.

Green's abrupt departure left a third hole in Rudenstine's administration. The president had been involved for months in searching for replacements for John R. Shattuck, the departed vice president for government, community and public affairs, and Robert H. Scott, former vice president for finance.

Rudenstine tends to labor over each appointment, according to sources. His searches are slow and deliberate, and his choices often come after months of contemplation.

The search for new Vice President for Finance Allan Procter '72 took more than a year. The search for Rowe lasted nearly two.

As of last week, the post of dean of the Kennedy School was still held by Carnesale, six months after he was appointed provost. The unintended result of Rudenstine's methodical and unhurried nature is that Carnesale now holds three posts--dean, provost and acting president.

But by the beginning of this October, the Kennedy School deanship was the only position needing a replacement. Rudenstine's ship seemed back on course--until it collided with Harvard's illustrious and stubborn faculty.

Personal Contact

Tensions between faculty members and the administration flared in October over the faculty's exclusion from the benefits task force. That group released a report last month detailing sweeping changes to the University's fringe benefits package.

In some ways, the fight with the faculty--and to some degree, most of the University--over benefits is a fitting analogy for the weak point of Rudenstine's leadership style, a dislike of delegation.

An article in yesterday's New York Times blames Rudenstine's "illness" on his tremendous worklo88ad and the stress of a decentralized government.

"A corporate executive would be stunned by the lack of support," University Treasurer D. Ronald Daniel told the Times. "University presidents have fewer people, fewer resources, more pressure and a lot of work to do."

But Rudenstine's apparent desire to be involved in all aspects of a given decision seems to have been the factor that pushed him from merely tired to utterly exhausted.

When Rudenstine appointed Green, the president indicated that the provost's primary responsibility would be to focus on areas such as the capital campaign, benefits review and academic planning. These were items the president did not wish to micromanage.

But Rudenstine was involved in the review process every step of the way. Instead of concentrating on faculty concerns, however, he immersed himself in the numbers, according to sources.

Green's resignation and departure from the benefits task force made the situation even worse. Rudenstine was left with a vacuum, and he filled it with even more time and energy.

The president presented the benefits package to the Faculty himself. Neither Green nor Vice President for Administration Sally H. Zeckhauser, the departed provost's successor as chair of the task force, attended.

Ironically, though, Rudenstine's fascination with details seems to have left him isolated from those the details ultimately affect.

Last month, a report commissioned by Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles confirmed that the president's benefits review had lost contact with the Faculty.

"It seems as though we were being treated more as employees of a business than members of a community," McKay Professor of Computer Science Barbara J. Grosz complained at an October faculty meeting.

As the Faculty bombarded him with criticism at November's Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) meeting, Rudenstine took full responsibility and shook his head dejectedly.

Ghosts of Decisions Past

In the fall of 1991, Rudenstine deferred taking action on the two issues which have consistently plagued his presidency--diversity and fundraising.

Rudenstine refused to take a stance on maintaining Harvard's ties with the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC). Many on campus had argued that the military's ban on homosexuals was in direct conflict with the University's policy of nondiscrimination.

Instead, the president appointed a committee, chaired by Pforzheimer University Professor Sidney Verba, to make a recommendation on the University's funding of Harvard students enrolled in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ROTC program.

Verba's report demanded that the University cut all ties with ROTC by the spring of 1993. But Rudenstine delayed making a decision until last week.

In the interim, student groups repeatedly demanded that the president take action on the issue. Last spring, with Rudenstine a full year past the Verba report's deadline, leaders of the Bisexual, Gay and Lesbian Student Association (BGLSA) and the Civil Liberties Union of Harvard (CLUH) presented the president with hundreds of petitions asking him to cut ties with ROTC.

When he acted, he found a solution that he called a compromise. It was pragmatic, and for now seems to have pleased both sides. While he recommended to the Corporation that the University continue funding ROTC, he attempted to meet the Verba report's demands by limiting that funding to designated alumni donations.

It would not be the only time that the president's commitment to promoting tolerance of homosexuality was called into question. In the spring of 1993, campus gay groups protested when the Corporation and Board of Overseers chose former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Colin L. Powell as the Commencement speaker for 1993.

Powell's endorsement of the military's ban on homosexuals at first made him a lightning rod for campus criticism. Rudenstine had actually argued against the choice, but was forced to defend it publicly.

In the end, Powell turned out to be Rudenstine's best ally. His Commencement speech was disarming, and the general drew praise from several protesters.

Fundraising

The $2.1 billion capital campaign has gone more smoothly. But it has also been a mighty test of the president's endurance. When he was too tired to work on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, the president missed fundraising appointments in New York City.

From the moment Rudenstine arrived at Harvard, he was faced with the daunting task of organizing huge a University-wide fund raising effort, He halted capital campaign plans that had been made under former President; Derek C. Bok in order to reevaluate the needs of the school and use the fundraising effort to shape his vision of Harvard.

The examination and discussion process was not easy. Harvard's schools have traditionally operated on the "every tub on its own bottom" approach, and Rudenstine sought to change that with the University-wide campaign.

After two years of planning the University Campaign, this largest fund drive in the history of higher education kicked off last May with close to one-third of the money already raised.

That is not to say the process will be easy. Rudenstine himself has emphasized the extreme difficulty in averaging the necessary $1 million a day. In the first five months, the fundraising has already proved arduous.

But since the campaign kick-off last spring, the University has raised approximately $125 million, according to a source close to the administration--a number that falls only slightly short of the president's announced goal of averaging $1 million a day.

But not all the schools have fallen into line with the capital campaign, or with Rudenstine's larger goal of a more coherent institution.

The Business School, Harvard's richest and possibly its most fiercely independent branch, currently denies that it is participating in a capital campaign.

It seems to bear no ill will towards the drive. Several Business School alumni, in fact, are directing fundraising efforts at other schools, and Dean John H. McArthur has said he will encourage potential B-School donors to give money to smaller, poorer schools.

Those at the campus across the river, however, have reiterated that they do not need to gain from the University campaign. Their school has "no capital needs" at this time, they say.

Relationship With McArthur

The fundraising arrangement with the Business School is indicative of the relationship between McArthur and Rudenstine. While the semi-reclusive dean does not seem to hold a grudge against Rudenstine, he and his colleagues doggedly focus on issues relating primarily to their Allston enclave.

Perhaps the most public example of the Business School attitude came when Rudenstine released his report on the planning process for the campaign.

In October of 1993, Rudenstine issued the long-awaited President's Report to the Board of Overseers. He had promised the document at the beginning of his tenure.

In an 84-page manuscript which the president penned himself, Rudenstine summarized the University's structure and analyzed its performance. The comprehensive report, which discusses every school, every field and many aspects of undergraduate life, consumed much of the president's energy during the 1992-1993 school year.

But on the day that Rudenstine was set to issue the long awaited report, McArthur gave a speech at Yale declaring the Business School to be "on a precipice."

A Business Week article the preceding summer had raised questions about the Business School's preeminence and whether the school had become out of date. The McArthur announcement served as a shocking acknowledgement of much of the criticism.

This recognition of the Business School's problems, and at Yale of all places, upstaged Rudenstine's report.

Although no evidence of a feud surfaced publicly, Rudenstine and other officials were less than pleased by the timing of McArthur's announcement, whether the timing was intentional or not.

Grasping for Power

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."Crimson File PhotoCOLINL L. POWELL