“I found his presentation of the new endeavor very compelling,” she says.

But Faust points out that Rudenstine’s support for Radcliffe has not diminished.

“He made it possible and continues to offer me and the Institute support in ways too varied to enumerate. The Institute would not exist without him,” she says.

In terms of Harvard history, the Harvard Radcliffe merger may be one of Rudenstine’s greatest accomplishments.

Another Rudenstine legacy: the Afro-American Studies Dream Team. Rudenstine also counts its recruitment among his proudest accomplishments. When he arrived, the department was struggling with only one tenured professor and one concentrator.

“Things were pretty rough,” explains department chair Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr.

In an attempt to rebuild the languishing department, Bok hired Gates as DuBois Professor of the Humanities in February 1991, three months before the search committee selected Rudenstine as Harvard’s next president.

But Rudenstine began his intensive recruiting and cultivation efforts for Harvard’s Afro- American Studies Department months before he set foot in his Mass. Hall office.

In May of 1991, the newly selected Rudenstine invited the newly recruited Gates to lunch. It was there, surrounded by the vibrant flowers of the Mellon Foundation’s garden, Gates remembers, that Rudenstine planted the seeds for the rebirth of African American Studies at Harvard.

The tale of how Rudenstine asked Gates to make a “fantasy list” of scholars for the department is practically Harvard legend. Rudenstine handed Gates a blank sheet of legal paper. Gates made a list that included Lani Guinier, Cornel West, William Julius Wilson, the Higginbothams, Lawrence D. Bobo and Suzanne P. Blier. A decade later, he notes, they’re all at Harvard, and the Afro-American Studies program—ranked number one in the nation—is planning to accept its first class of doctoral candidates this fall.

“Black people have a saying that he or she not only talks the talk, but walks the walk,” Gates explains. “And no one has walked the walk more boldly in terms of diversity and affirmative action and Afro-American studies than Neil Rudenstine.”

Before Rudenstine, Gates explains, the total endowment for the DuBois Institute and the Department were “negligible.” Now, after Rudenstine’s intense fundraising efforts, the endowment is a hefty $39 million—and growing.

And before Rudenstine, the Harvard library collection had no papers from African-American scholars. Now, Harvard has the papers of 1986 Nobel Prize Laureate Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe and Shirley DuBois—among others.

Rudenstine is clearly proud of the accomplishment.