JOHN HARVARD'S JOURNAL what we should be spending each year to keep up all our buildings. T h e really certifying figure that emerges is on the order of $60 million. You can't do that every year. But if over the years you spend considerably less, it's likely to cause a deferred maintenance problem that will cost even more to fix. What was the former level of spending for maintenance? Half that, or less. In the Seventies— because of reduced government support, inflation, the slide in the stock market—all of higher education indulged in massive deferred maintenance. It is having to catch up in the Eighties. What about the Harvard landscape? It's been a particular interest of yours. Well, I grew up as the youngest child in a family that lived in a vacant canyon in southern California, where we tried to create an oasis in the unyielding desert. That left a lasting impression on me chat one should pay attention to one's physical surroundings, that lasting pleasure could be derived therefrom. So we've been working slowly, with modest resources, to make the campus look beccer. It was pretty battered after the student demonstrations. T h e more crowded and noisy a cicy is, die more imporcanc it is to have a place of repose to which contemplative people can repair. Over the next ten or fifteen years I hope that process will continue around Harvard Square, retaining all the charm and vitality, but replacing some of the tackier parts wich something that has some grace and beauty. This is the only tangible thing I do. Everything else relies on hope and expresses itself in qualitative ways that arc subject to interpretation. But when you take a piece of ground and create something beautiful there . . . It's probably a response to some deep need to reassure myself that something has gotten better during my administration.
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n the years ahead, do you see Harvard's population growing? During my first year in office I read a lot on how large you have to be to mount a full array of academic programs. T h e conventional wisdom was that you needed about 6,000 students. The upper limit was 15,000
students; beyond that you'd run into diminishing returns and begin to incur the inevitable drawbacks of bureaucratization. When I came in I took steps to prevent further increases, because Harvard had grown by four or five thousand students in the last decade alone, and none of that was done by big, dramaticdecisions. We didn't start any new schools. It was just add a few here, add a few there. That was also a convenient way of balancing the budget—an illusory way, but in the short run, very tempting. So we clamped down. T h e total may have gone up by two or three hundred, but we kept it more or less stable. I see no reason to change that. We live in a crowded community. Housing isn't easy to come by. I see a lot of disadvancages to adding people. I see few advantages. In the nontraditional programs, we have many more people coming in the summer ami in the Extension School, reflecting the great upswing in interest in continuing education. But that seems to be something we can handle without creating problems. What about your own future plans? I live from day to day. My house is on a month-to-month lease. People keep speculating . . . That's right. Someone said to me yesterday, "People have rumored your imminent departure since the first year you were in office." Are there programs or innovations you'd still like to see initiated? President Lowell said you should never disclose what you want to do, or immediately the battle lines begin forming. Really, I'm not very good at introducing dramatic new programs. I think universities develop best when they move slowly and consistently, so that only after fifteen or twenty years can you look back and see chat it's a lot different in a number of ways. Beyond that it's important to remember that the quality of Harvard depends more than anything else on the quality of its faculcy. So we muse work continually at making Harvard an attractive place, and try to make each department and each appointment as good as we possibly can. If we manage that, we'll have a huge number of individ-
uals, autonomous scholars, out there looking and testing for interesting new things to do, and the creative growth of the University will in large part take care of itself. Are you satisfied with the present appointments process? 1 think universities, and Harvard in particular, stand up very well to any institution in the care they devote to finding the right person to put in a job. I think wc fall down in taking responsibility for helping people develop once they're here. There are reasons for that. T h e principle of academic freedom makes one wary about interfering with the way a professor goes about his work. On the other hand, there are lots of things you can do—especially for younger faculty—to help develop their talents, to encourage them to think more boldly, with a longer time frame, about their own aspirations. One strategic judgment I've made, at lease for Arcs and Sciences, is chac we should greacly increase ourefforcs co develop people from wichin. About M) percent of tenure appointments are now from within. If we could move that to 40, 45, even 50 percent, I think it would serve Harvard well. We'd be sure of having people here ac the heighc of their creative powers, reducing the risk of having a distinguished faculty made up of people who did their best work elsewhere. You know, when the process of aging and decline sets in, a department has a hard time reversing it. You can do ic. Harvard's reputation and che quality of die scudencs are scill greac assccs. But it's a lot harder. Whereas if you look at
strong departments—particularly if they've appointed people at their height, in their forties—you get momentum, and good people almost appear of their own accord. So success does perpetuate success, which is one of the reasons for this remarkable thing we should be thinking about during Harvard's anniversary—that Harvard, after 350 years, is still up there battling, still trying to achieve the highest level of quality. In most other walks of life, institutions come and go. Institutions that seem to be doing very well in one generation decline in the next. That's not true of universities. Q SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1986
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