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.

The last two have a similarly collaborative ring: sciences and the arts are firmly in the fiefdom of Dean ofthe Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles.

All four share several common threads, and intheir similarities highlight the way Rudenstinewill continue to manage his empire after thecapital campaign.

First, they are all visionary but vague,starting the process of change but leaving lots ofroom for his consensus-based cabinet government tocarve out the specifics.

Second, they will all be implemented by someoneelse, in keeping with Rudenstine's shunning of thecampus limelight.

"I'm just not going to be the person standingup and telling other people what to do,"Rudenstine says. "But that doesn't mean I'm nottrying in some way to advance the cause."

Third, they are all collaborative, implying acooperation between Rudenstine and his underlingstypical of a president without the ability tomanage by fiat.

"Who gets the credit, I could care less,"Rudenstine says. "That's not the nature of thejob. The nature of the job is to get it done."

In light of both Rudenstine's style and trackrecord, these goals and their similarities makeperfect sense.

Effective But Invisible

Rudenstine signed on in 1991 with a promise tohelp unify the University, which at the time hecalled "fiendishly decentralized."

But the deans of Harvard's myriad schools, longaccustomed to a deep-thinking president and alarge measure of self-government, did not buy ineasily.

And so the combination of presidential visionand administrative stubbornness was anear-complete dependence on government byconsensus.

"Neil's power as a president is the power ofappointment and the power of persuasion," saysJames H. Rowe III '73, vice president forgovernment, community and public affairs. "Becauseof how decentralized Harvard is, he has to spendmore time getting consensus, gettingcollaboration."

The most concrete sign of this focus onconsensus is the Academic Advisory Group--amonthly gathering of deans and Mass. Hallofficials that considers and often amends most ofRudenstine's proposals.

By concentrating power in this consensus-ruledcabinet, Rudenstine created an arena for the"intellectual persuasion" that gets things done inhis Harvard bureaucracy.

But he effectively barred himself from usingMass. Hall's bully pulpit as way to call forchange publicly and unilaterally.

"[It's about being] someone whodialogues...someone who listens," says VicePresident for Finance Elizabeth C. "Beppie"Huidekoper. "[Rudenstine] is not someone to makequick judgments, and I think that's so healthy."

In an attempt to solidify his centralizingtendencies, Rudenstine has focused on tangible andobvious examples of inter-school collaboration.

These include ADAPT and the unprecedentedUniversity-wide campaign, which for the first timecentralized the demands of all the schools andcreated one fundraising apparatus to coordinateall of them.

"The culture of this place has changed," saysVice President for Alumni Affairs and DevelopmentThomas M. Reardon.

"[Rudenstine has] made the place a great dealmore interactive--before there was very littlesharing of information or ideas," he says.

Other signs of collaboration between differentschools include the Hong Kong center, a jointoperation between the Business School (HBS),Kennedy School of Government and the Faculty ofArts and Sciences; as well as inter-departmentalcentralizing efforts like the Barker Center forthe Humanities.

More curricular results of Rudenstine's"knitting the University together" includeprograms in Mind, Brain and Behavior;Environmental Science and Public Policy; and thegraduate program in Ethics and the Professions,all of which combine the resources of severaldepartments in one course of study.

"Clearly, he's the first president who's triedunifying the University," Rowe says. "That's beenreflected in academic planning, fundraising...in avariety of ways across the University."

But there are problems with this collaborativeleadership approach. All goals must be private orvery vague, so as to allow his cabinet to acceptand amend them successfully.

And the presidential authority to decree policyhas all but disappeared. Bok proposed the Corecurriculum in detail in one President's report.Now it seems that even a decision to affectFaculty hires would run into strong resistancefrom the appropriate dean.

Knowles says it would be nearly-impossible forRudenstine to make a concrete change in aparticular school without consulting and winningover the dean.

"It's not a command-and-control basedinstitution," says Provost Harvey V. Fineberg '67of Rudenstine's Harvard. "[It relies on] the powerof ideas and engagement."

Coda: The Legacy Thing

And as he approaches the post-campaign futurewithout even the appearance ofcommand-and-control, Rudenstine may also be facinga comparison with his predecessor in Mass. Hall inwhich his hidden achievements may lose out.

First, Rudenstine stands in the shadows ofpresidents like Bok, who made personal goalspublic and started the University towards aconcrete--though often unachievable--set of futuregoals.

Bok spoke in visionary specifics, outlining thedetails of his plans in public forums and gettingthings done in the public eye. By relying on anadministrative cabinet, Rudenstine has moreday-to-day effects on University decision making.

But he also ends up spending a lot of timepushing the bureaucracy along towardscollaborative and compromise objectives, and inthe end getting little credit for what gets done.

And so while Bok's shadow as an "educationpresident" still falls across the Harvard campus,Rudenstine may have a far smaller historicalpresence and little institutional record outsidethe Campaign.

Second, by building his entire legacy inboardroom cooperation, Rudenstine has made hisachievements vulnerable to consensus--where afuture president and more independent-minded cropof deans could easily sweep it away.

"[It would be] fairly easy to kill it," saysHBS Dean Kim B. Clark, one of Rudenstine's mostrecent hires, on the president's success atcentralization. But he adds, "The current deansreally like it, and I think will carry it on."

And Rudenstine's current goals, even ifcompleted fully by the time he leaves office, arenot likely to make more incontrovertible change.

His decision to make change privately andindirectly, allowing others to mold and takecredit for actions he begins, may make Rudenstineeasy to forget. From his leadership style andplans for the future, it seems that thepresident's legacy deficit is not likely to changeanytime soon.

"When the Corporation asked me if I wanted thisjob, they pretty much knew who I was," Rudenstinesaid last month.

"I can only be who I am, and I can only producethe kinds of results that I can produce," he said

--Nicholas A. Nash contributed to thereporting of this article.Crimson File PhotoAUTONOMOUS: Dean of the FacultyJEREMY R. KNOWLES says Rudenstine needs topersuade a dean to make changes involving any oneschool.