Rudenstine came to Harvard with an ambitious, joyful stride, energized and prepared to bring his vision of educational and administrative reform to the University. He was inaugurated amidst great fanfare and frippery, with a two-day celebration featuring faculty symposiums, literary readings, special exhibits and an elaborate outdoor ceremony. Fifteen thousand people attended. No president had ever arrived with such a bang.

Among his top goals, Rudenstine cited improving undergraduate education, diversity and student aid. He also intended to “knit the University together” by creating programs between the traditionally separate faculties and introducing the first post-war provost.

The presidential search committee of 1991 was attracted to Rudenstine’s progressive vision of uniting the University, but they also brought him to Harvard for a more pressing cause. Harvard needed money. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences was running an operating deficit, and fundraising was about to become everyone’s favorite pastime—and Rudenstine’s life. Enter the first-ever University-wide Capital Campaign—requiring a planning process that tied the various faculties together as never before.

In the first 30 months, he had to raise $650 million.

“There were specific timelines on it, and there was no way to delay key parts of it, and I probably underestimated the fact that I was rather older than when I had started out,” he says.

“He was staying up all night writing notes to everybody who did anything for Harvard,” Stone remembers.

Rudenstine acknowledges that he should have realized that he was “pressing too hard” at the beginning of his tenure. By 1994, he had run down his own health to the point that he had to take three months off. His then-provost, Al Carnesale, took over as acting president, and Rudenstine became the national poster boy for exhaustion, even making the cover of Newsweek.