Later in the year, when racial tensions flared on campus, Rudenstine regularly met with students and publicly advocated the importance of diversity, making his viewpoints heard on a wide range of issues.

Though his public profile gradually diminished after his first year as President, Rudenstine continued to speak out on select issues, sometimes traveling to Washington, D.C. to testify before Congress.

He views himself as an “outspoken” national spokesperson for issues such as diversity, affirmative action, scientific funding and student aid.

“He’s been the conscience—not just within Harvard, and not just within the higher education community, but in society at large, for recognizing the importance and the value to all of us in insuring that our universities serve all people, and not just a privileged few,” Carnesale says.

“My sense is there are some things on which you definitely should speak out and other things where it would be more effective to use discussion in a quiet way,” Rudenstine explains.

In 1943, Conant and Provost Paul Buck were riding on a train together. Conant turned to Buck and asked, “What are we going to do about the Harvard-Radcliffe relationship?”

“Nothing,” Buck answered. “It’s like a scrambled egg, and there’s no way to unscramble it.”

For years, the role of Radcliffe and its relationship with Harvard remained an unsolved problem—an issue that confounded even the most able administrators.

It was not until 1998 that the many years of distrust and disagreement between Harvard and Radcliffe College were put aside and negotiators from both schools got serious about making an agreement. At 12:01 a.m. on October 1, as Radcliffe officials toasted the end of the 120-year-old institution’s independence from Harvard underneath an apple tree in Radcliffe Yard, what was formerly known as Radcliffe College ceased to exist, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study was born.

Though the shift was described in simple business terms, it came as the end of years of difficult negotiations with Harvard officials. And Rudenstine was the man who made it happen—the only one who could have brokered such a far reaching , complex deal, say those involved in the process.

“He had the imagination to pull that off,” Thompson says.

“His obvious concern, his total trustworthiness, his ability to listen to the opinions of others and respond effectively to them all made him an ideal person to work in a situation in which a legacy of suspicion had grown up over many decades,” says Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study Dean Drew Gilpin Faust.

Faust first discussed the Institute with Rudenstine in December 1999, and formally became the Dean of the Institute four months later.