One year from today, facing a Yard full of alumni and 363 prestigious years of shoes to fill, President Neil L. Rudenstine will close the books on the Capital Campaign, the largest fundraising drive in Harvard history.

When he sits down from that momentous announcement, Rudenstine will be on the down slope of his presidency--having completed a massive undertaking that bound his University together, shook $2.1 billion out of Harvard's alumni and friends and nearly ruined his health in the process.

And the day after, Rudenstine will return to Mass. Hall with the largest endowment in higher education, the bulliest pulpit in American academia and no more excuses. With the campaign over, he will have face up to a legacy deficit: Harvard's 26th president will be richer than God and about as invisible.

This invisibility stems from the behind-the-scenes way Rudenstine has chosen to lead a University full of powerful fiefdoms. He has worked hard to bind Harvard's deans to a system of government by consensus which has both empowered him as president and bound that power to the approval of others.

Knowing this, a year from the beginning of the rest of his life as Harvard president, the question must be asked: where does Rudenstine intend to go with that power?

And the answer, judging from the successes of his first seven years as president and his stated goals for the next few, is: nowhere public, nowhere specific and nowhere he will have to go alone.

The Plan

In interviews last month, Rudenstine extemporized on his goals after the campaign, first by dismissing rumors that a planned post-campaign retirement made goal setting unnecessary.

"I feel energized," he said, and declined to speculate on a date for his departure.

He went on to outline four areas of emphasis, in typical Rudenstine fashion, talking more like a moderator than an architect, throwing out topics rather than outlining specific plans for concrete change.

The first of these areas was information technology (IT), a pet project for his entire term which has had its most concrete effects in Project ADAPT--a grinding initiative to centralize all University accounting. He spoke briefly about the possibilities for IT's extension into educational tools: "It takes a lot of thought."

Second was a focus on internationalization, another trend which Rudenstine has repeatedly sketched in broad strokes but left without a detailed vision. It likely means an extension of current projects like the planned Asia Pacific Research Center in Hong Kong and the on-campus focus on international studies soon to be centralized in the Knafel Center.

Third, he emphasized the need to strengthen the sciences at Harvard, from the hard sciences to engineering.

And fourth, he outlined an academic commitment to the arts likely to include both museum renovations and a general improvement of conservatory-style arts instruction for undergrads.

The first two goals are familiar to Mass. Hall observers, classic talking points for the president and manifestations of a larger commitment to centralizing Harvard's bureaucracy.