Like those before him, Rudenstine came to Harvard with an ambitious, joyful stride, energized and prepared to bring his vision of educational and administrative reform to the University. He was inaugurated amidst great fanfare and frippery, with a two-day celebration featuring faculty symposiums, literary readings, special exhibits and an elaborate outdoor ceremony, attended by over 15,000 people.

Among his top goals, the newly arrived Rudenstine cited improving undergraduate education, diversity and student aid. Above all, he intended to “knit the University together” by creating programs between the faculties and introducing the first post-war provost. Rudenstine wanted to shift the age-old University paradigm of “every tub on its own bottom” to “every tub on each other’s bottom,” to create an interdependent relationship between the many tubs—aka faculties—of the University.

But as Plummer Professor of Chrisitan Morals Peter J. Gomes says, “Every president of Harvard is chosen with a kind of implicit shopping list of things to do.”

At the outset of their Harvard presidential terms, Nathan M. Pusey ’28 was charged with bringing the University together after the turmoil of World War II. Derek C. Bok had to restore continuity and rebuild infrastructure after the turmoil of the 1960s.

Rudenstine was, in a sense, “chosen to fuel the engine,” according to Gomes.

The presidential search committee of 1991 was attracted to Rudenstine’s progressive vision of uniting the University, but they also brought him to Harvard for a more imperative purpose. Harvard needed money-and fast. Enter the first-ever University-wide Capital Campaign—requiring a planning process that tied the various faculties together as never before. With the Faculty of Arts and Sciences running an operating deficit, fundraising was about to become everyone’s favorite pastime—and Rudenstine’s life.

In the first 30 months, he had to raise $650 million.

“He nearly broke himself in those first two years. He was never quite the same on the other side of his leave of absence. He decided he was going to have to ration his energies. I think he was often exhausted,” Gomes observes.

He was, in fact, exhausted. By 1994, he had run down his own health to the point that he had to take three months off. His then-provost, Al Carnesale, took over as acting president, and Rudenstine became the national poster boy for exhaustion.

“He was staying up all night writing notes to everybody who did anything for Harvard,” Stone remembers.

“He focuses on you and your concerns, rather than his own, however pressing these may be,” Knowles says.

“His whole presidency has always been about Harvard and what’s good for Harvard. It’s not about Neil Rudenstine and what’s good for Neil Rudenstine,” adds his provost, Harvey V. Fineberg ’67.

Rudenstine acknowledges that he should have realized that he was “pressing too hard” at the beginning of his tenure.

“It’s not just because it wasn’t good for me,” he says. “It wasn’t good for Harvard.”

He says he simply underestimated the intensity of the initial agenda.