But it all adds up to nothing. He was not charming in our interviews. He wasn’t helpful, though he was cordial and occasionally asked the obligatory questions about what we were up to for the summer. I can’t think of a student event that has been held in his Harvard mansion in my four years. He gave up teaching, real scholarship of his own and interaction with young minds, in order to administer, to dean and to talk about how great universities are. I wonder if any member of our class has ever been invited there. I wonder how many students’ names he knows. I wonder what sort of friend he is even to his aged peers, not just “kids” like us. Is he affectionate? Or is he interesting for conversation and hollow for humanity? Did he toss a football with his kids? He doesn’t give one the feeling that he could just relax and be a person, an ability we fancy few are fast losing.

I don’t really want to criticize the man though. I just want to set down the texture I have felt as one of the students who actually has known him. A new president is coming in and he pledges to do things differently, but Larry Summers, who seems incapable of eating a meal without decorating his tie with some bit of colorful cuisine, may not be suave enough or mild enough to accomplish the kinds of things Neil did, raising billions (billions!) of dollars and showing Radcliffe who her daddy is.

The Presidency of Harvard is relatively weak because the deans of Harvard’s various schools retain a great deal of control over their dominions. Harvard has had visionary presidents: In the late 19th century Charles W. Eliot, Class of 1853, made some controversial innovations that established the paradigm for the modern university and ensured that this particular school would not just be the oldest in America. It would be the best. Even President Rudenstine’s predecessor, Derek Bok, managed to reshape some important parts of Harvard—he founded the Kennedy School, for example—in a significant fashion. But perhaps this place is now so large that it requires a corporate manager of sorts at its top. Jeremy Knowles, the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and therefore the most powerful man with direct control over the things we care about such as the College, got along well with Neil. Neil’s first job pick was Knowles, at the time the Nobel-quality scientist chairing the chemistry department. They would get together, Jeremy the Brit, all Burberry suit and vociferating hands, and Neil the Danburian, quirky humanitarian, and talk art over fancy wines with their wives. Over time, well, things got tense.

Freshman year, a whole slew of other colleges offered significant financial aid reforms. Harvard didn’t, at least not until more than a year had passed. Bleeding-heart Neil wanted to follow suit, but Jeremy who is prudent forbade it. Neil Rudenstine could do nothing. What’s a president supposed to do in that kind of situation? And so once again, Neil was torn between corporate necessities and his native impulses. He understood his position and that event, like so many others, must have acted like a wedge between the human being behind that gaunt physique and the dull academic manager. But at least it helps to explain how Neil got to be the way he is: remote, inaccessible, and uninterested in the mortar that holds the ancient institutional bricks of this place together.

This place is Byzantine. It was my job as ambassador to the Nation of Neil to understand how power is brokered around here, and I can’t say I ever got a grip on it. The president is an enigma and the best we seem to be able to do is identify when he’s doing his job wrong, failing to make a splash, to catch our eyes, take stands and learn our names. I have a friend who collects the signatures of Harvard Presidents. His archive includes James B. Conant ’14 (also a Crimson editor) and it includes Increase Mather. That’s impressive. But those characters could assert themselves as educational pioneers, and they lived nearly four centuries apart.

The president’s mansion on Elmwood Avenue is far away from campus, in order to shield him from the roguish mobery of student vigilantes, a danger that admittedly did not go away when the Vietnam War did. The president’s house is on a small sidestreet off of Upper Brattle Street, appropriately nicknamed Tory Row since the palaces there were the homes of those sympathetic to the crown in the battle for American Independence two centuries ago. Those were not brave spirits. Those were cool considerate men of moderation and caution. Sellouts of their day. The president used to live in Loeb House, the building across from the entrance to Lamont Library. But that location is too central for the presidency as it has evolved today, the president I have known. The president’s home is well landscaped. Its clapboards are yellow and the garage to the side is bigger than many of the houses in other parts of Cambridge. I imagine it’s nice on the inside. I can only imagine.

The president is driven by a man named O’Riordan who is a bonafide Irishman. He is a silver-haired, ruddy-cheeked character whose brogue is unmistakable. The scene is like something from a black-and-white movie in the 1930s, with Carey Grant being chauffeured here and there by some effervescent central-casting type. But Neil isn’t Carey, and his job is hardly romantic. I have seen the president’s Oldsmobuick in Harvard Yard waiting for its cargo to finish up in his computer-less office. It is as if the president is too frail to walk to Mass Ave. without a gasoline-powered sedan chair. The president’s sedan has vanity plates that read 1636.