The New Yorker

Since leaving Harvard in 1971, Pusey has spent most of his time working with New York non-profits, first in higher education, but later with religious and mental health groups.

He originally moved to New York to become president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the educational foundation where he was a member of the founding board of trustees.

When he left the foundation after four years, he intended to return to Cambridge, where he wanted to write a book about being a college president in the turbulent 1960s.

But his charity work in New York kept him in the Big Apple. His principle interest was Fountain House, a charity that counsels the mentally ill, providing employment and, sometimes, housing.

A post that he took in the mid-1970s on the Fountain House's Committee on Educational Research grew into a quarter century of work with the house, which he continued until recent years.

"We help them by never admitting they're sick--they're just as healthy as can be," Pusey says of the philosophy that guides the house in its work. "We get them doing some work; that work has to be in their own interest."

His other passion has been Christian education in the Far East. An invitation to get involved with the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia from a sister of Time Magazine founder Henry Luce led within two years to the presidency of its Board of Trustees. In his years with the foundation he took a number of trips to Asia and served as a member of the Foundation's executive committee and chair of its Development Committee.