With many administrative vacancies to fill—the Deans of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Kennedy School of Government, the Graduate School of Education and the Vice President and General Counsel all stepped down at the end of Bok’s tenure—Rudenstine was overwhelmed with searches at the beginning of his tenure.

“I didn’t know anyone in the institution. I didn’t have a clue who to choose,” he explains.

Just as members of the Harvard Corporation had painstakingly sifted through files and biographies in their search for the 26th Harvard President, Rudenstine embarked on his own methodical hunt.

“Most presidents don’t do their own searches,” Vice President for Finance Elizabeth C. “Beppie” Huidekoper points out.

But the searches gave Rudenstine yet another opportunity to centralize. He reorganized the administration so that the Deans not only worked on behalf of their specific schools, but also on behalf of the University as a whole. They became, in effect, a consultative cabinet.

Perhaps Rudenstine’s most significant change to Harvard’s administration was the recreation of the provost position, which Pusey had eliminated. Rudenstine envisioned the Provost as a “cloned president,” as not only a tool for delegation, but also a means of unifying the University. For example, the provost’s office now oversees interfaculty initiatives, one of Rudenstine’s favorite projects, which unify academic interests—like Mind, Brain and Behavior—across the schools.

But this change hasn’t met with unequivocal approval. Officials on the Board of Overseers, in the central administration and in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences have said they fear the strengthened provost’s office created by Rudenstine and Fineberg has diluted the autonomy of the University’s faculties.