It was not until 1998 that the many years of distrust and disagreement between Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges were put aside and negotiators from both schools got serious about making an agreement. Harvard officially took responsibility for female undergraduates, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study was born. Though the shift was described in simple business terms, it marked the end of years of difficult negotiations with Harvard officials. And Rudenstine was the man who made it happen—the only one who could have brokered such a far reaching , complex deal, say those involved in the process.

“His obvious concern, his total trustworthiness, his ability to listen to the opinions of others and respond effectively to them all made him an ideal person to work in a situation in which a legacy of suspicion had grown up over many decades,” says Drew Gilpin Faust, now the dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

“He had the imagination to pull that off,” Thompson explains.

Historically, some of the nation’s most important education reforms have emerged from Harvard’s own bully pulpit. Soft-spoken Rudenstine, more suited to the shadows than the limelight, leaves Harvard’s podium considerably diminished.

James B. Conant ’14, the 23rd President of Harvard, was both a leader in national education reform and an international figure, serving as the High Commissioner to Germany under U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Class of 1904, during the final year of his Harvard tenure. Bok was also a prominent national figure, frequently writing op-ed pieces in national newspapers and testifying before Congress.

Rudenstine, in contrast, was generally quiet on the national front, shying away from the media and what many believed was his duty as the president of one of the foremost institutions of higher education.