“Before 1969, there was contentment in allowing Deans considerable discretion,” says Secretary of the Faculty John B. Fox Jr. `59. “Afterwards, there was a forest of consultation. It significantly changed the governance by instituting lots of new committees that had to be involved.”

The first Dean to confront that forest of consultation once it had been fully established was Bok appointee Henry Rosovsky, now Geyser University Professor Emeritus.

Rosovsky, who Professor of Music Christoph J. Wolff says had a “personal yet authoritative touch about everything,” was masterful at navigating the triple-checks installed after the protests. Rosovsky announced his plans to implement the now-familiar Core Curriculum to professors two years ahead of time and pushed the program through entirely constitutional channels, winning a trial by fire at the hands of a faculty of intellectual prizefighters.

Some faculty critics allege that the “transparency” of the era, in the words of Abbe Professor of Economics Dale Jorgenson, placated Rosovsky’s opposition into believing that their views mattered when in fact they had no more power than they had before 1969.

“I doubt whether the committees made all that much difference,” said Trumbull Research Professor of History Donald H. Fleming. “Every dean can impose his will. If only for cosmetic purposes, the forms were gone through. It was a strategy in the wake of that trouble—he was a more visible person, he circulated, which flattered people.”

After Rosovsky’s resignation, Bok was inevitably hard-pressed to find another Dean who would be equally capable of implementing decisions through navigation of this consultative forest.

Bok said he wanted Knowles, then the very effective chair of a chemistry department Bok deemed “very proud with a lot of strong characters,” to assume the position, but Knowles indicated that he preferred to continue with teaching and research.

The man Bok selected instead, A. Michael Spence, unwittingly demonstrated the challenges presented by the position. Although he made a number of strong appointments to FAS, he was unable to maintain the support the President over his five year tenure, and in 1990 he abruptly resigned.

Observers remember Spence as less outspoken than Rosovsky, and faculty at the time questioned his responsiveness to their concerns.

According to Wolff, many faculty members objected to Spence’s expansion of University Hall bureaucracy to include an Administrative Dean and an Associate Dean for Academic Planning as an unwelcome increase in bureaucratic red tape.

They protested even more strongly when a University committee decided to turn a recently acquired Massachusetts Avenue gas station into the Inn at Harvard during Spence’s deanship. According to Coolidge Professor of History David S. Landes, Bok’s central administration had already decided to use the space for a “commercial enterprise” instead of using it to extend FAS’ library capacity.

“It was precisely the kind of thing where the Faculty should have been consulted,” he said.

The New Dean