With achievements like the Afro-American studies department, Radcliffe and Allston under his belt, Rudenstine is bemused to realize that many people still see him as a moneymaker.

“I find it intriguing and somewhat ironic that people should think of me as a fundraiser,” he muses. “That’s not how I think about myself.”

In his mind, at least, Rudenstine is a teacher first.

“I don’t think of [fundraising] as something divorced from either my academic or intellectual life or my life as a teacher,” Rudenstine observes. “The only kind of fundraising that makes sense in a university is that which grows out of understanding as much as you can in terms of the actual academic mission of the institution.”

While much of Rudenstine’s agenda, time and even image have been consumed by the Capital Campaign, he has, in one of the shortest presidential tenures in Harvard’s history, accomplished some of the most significant changes in the University’s history. In addition to purchasing the land in Allston—where one or another of Harvard’s faculties will eventually end up—there was the long-awaited merger with sister school Radcliffe College, vocal support of affirmative action policies, the bolstering of the Afro-American Studies Department to national prominence and the growth of financial aid.

With a decade-long term—exactly what he promised when he arrived—Rudenstine can number some of Harvard’s greatest changes among his accomplishments. His involvement has sometimes been behind the scenes, but often he is the unseen impetus behind major University change—change that doesn’t immediately show.

For example, for years, the role of Radcliffe and its relationship with Harvard remained an unsolved problem—an issue that confounded even the most able administrators.