Almost But Not Quite: Finalist for Three Presidencies

   I wasn’t exactly restless and continued to like my job, but there was a period while I was dean of arts and sciences at Northwestern when I was a candidate for quite a few other positions. I don’t know myself how seriously I took them; since I was a finalist for number of them, I was able to enjoy visiting other campuses and mostly found interacting with the people I met there to be interesting and often even fun. The jobs for which I was thus inspected were all nominally “more significant” than the one I had: some were provostships—vice presidencies for academic affairs—and three were for the top job, for presidencies. I only became provost of the University of Pittsburgh after I had stepped down as NU dean;¹ I was not offered any of the ones for which I was a candidate while dean, several times, I was told, for reasons that had nothing to do with me. I might also add that I even though I was attracted to a few of these positions—especially one to be discussed below—I was never even close to being distressed by these rejections. More evidence, if indirect, that I liked the job I had. 

   I wouldn’t want to rehearse all of my search adventures, even if I could better recall them. Instead, I want to give brief accounts of the three presidential searches for which I was a finalist and make some comments from the distance of thirty years and more in the future of those events.

   The last of them was for the presidency of the University of Oregon. I don’t recall what led to my candidacy there; I do know that I was not brimming with enthusiasm, given Eugene, Oregon’s distance from familiar territory and especially from Fannia’s personal and professional loci. But in effect I got quite far with them. The last step in the process was to meet with relevant members of the Oregon legislature for their final approval. But instead of being anointed, they told me that because the university was facing serious budget cuts, they had decided to have an old hand in charge, the Oregon provost, whom they had not considered for the presidency because of his age. OK by me, as they used to say in Brooklyn.

   Next, earlier, was the contest (probably not the wrong word) for the presidency of Brandeis University. Somewhat surprisingly, I was a candidate. How things happen: the daughter of a Vassar faculty friend was the secretary of a lawyer who was involved in the search for the Brandeis presidency. She prodded her boss and that got me into that act.

   I almost didn’t make it to the meeting that made me a finalist. Fannia and I were then at the chamber music concerts at Marlboro in Vermont. It was easy enough to drive down to Boston for the meeting I was invited to, but getting to the right place in Boston was another matter. I would never have made it through that maze had not some kind soul said to me, “follow me.”

   After Boston I became one of three finalists and was invited to Brandeis for The Decision. The last hurdle was a large group with whom I had a lively exchange that actually concluded with some applause. And the next morning I had breakfast with Abram Sacher, the founding president of Brandeis. After all that, Evelyn Handler was picked to be the university’s next president.   

   No one of course tells you why you were not selected; all you get are thanks for allowing yourself to be considered. But I got an inkling many years later, though I don’t recall the source and can’t attest to its reliability. I was not Jewish enough, it was thought. Well, the subject of my Jewishness never came up in the questions I was asked at that plenary meeting, so, my responses didn’t call for that. I was ready, had it been relevant, to talk about my role in the synagogue choir and would have been ready to sing for them my favorite melody of V’shomru, which most of them probably didn’t even know. Still, many years after I was given that reason for my rejection, it occurred to me that my status as a Yekke², a German Jew, may have influenced that final decision.

   Amusingly, if I can trust the gossip that reached me, Ms. Handler was later fired because she had authorized the serving of shrimp—which are emphatically not kosher—in the Brandeis cafeteria. I don’t think I would have done that: too high risk for too little gain.

   The third presidency for which I was a finalist—and the one that interested me most—was that of Oberlin College. Not only was I more familiar with the issues that pertained to a liberal arts college, but for a passionate lover of music, the Oberlin Conservatory was of course an extra attraction. The path toward my becoming a finalist and my ultimate loss to Frederick Starr was not without its incidents. The first of these was instigated by a member of the search committee among those who interviewed me at the Stanhope Hotel on Fifth Avenue. She was, if I remember correctly, a professor of psychology in a Boston-area institution. She noted, she said, that the women on the search committee participated much less in the discussion than the men: was there something about me that discouraged them?

   Well, when the committee went into a huddle after having seen all their candidates and considered making me a finalist, a small delegation was sent to the Northwestern campus to investigate my role with women on my home base. I had no contact with these visitors who proceeded to interview a number of women faculty members, including a couple of outspoken feminists. I never had feedback from the NU faculty or from the Oberlin visitors, but I must have passed the test, since I shortly became one of two finalists for the job.

   That meant visiting the campus and, for two days, meeting with a variety of individuals and groups, as well as touring the campus. My daughter Ellie was then an Oberlin senior, though my appearance on “her” campus was hardly a fatherly visit. As it became clear that I was not papabile, I thought of two things that probably negatively distinguished me from the successful candidate. While I don’t think that the first had much on an effect on the outcome, the second most likely made a serious—and negative—difference.

   When Fred Starr, the successful candidate, met with the student committee he tossed around a football with them. I was not that chummy, but had what I thought was a good, but serious, discussion with the group. My positive feeling about that was later confirmed when the daughter of an acquaintance who had been involved gave me what now would be called positive feedback.

   I am quite sure that in the second encounter, with an important faculty group, I goofed, though of course no one tells you such a thing. My recollection is not sharp, but here it is in outline. I was asked (approximately) what I thought the role of the president was vis-à-vis the curriculum.  My answer, as I recall it, was that while the president had no say in what the curriculum—requirements, whatever—should be, he did have a role to convene relevant faculty units when he thought aspects of the curriculum needed attention. From the unspoken reactions of the group I came to realize (though not right away) that the “correct” answer regarding the president’s role concerning the curriculum was NONE.           

   When I was told that I would not be chosen I was urged by several people to withdraw my candidacy, so I did just that. In retrospect, I wish I had not let myself be talked into engaging in that awkward charade: what, after all, is wrong with being the runner up for the Oberlin presidency?

   A second, more serious speculative reflection pertained to the role of Oberlin president itself. But while Fannia didn’t really think that a city with a population fewer than a million was the sort of place she wanted to live in, she had adjusted to and thrived in small and inelegant Poughkeepsie. She surely would have done so in Oberlin, Ohio. But what about me, moving from dean to president? To begin with, I am sure that I could have done the job—perhaps not brilliantly, but competently. I had the requisite knowledge via my previous experience and I had the needed personality traits, from being able to listen and to persuade. And since I adapt quite easily to new situations, I probably would have liked the job. Anyway, well enough.

   But would I really have liked it? About that I’m not at all sure: fundraising, much traveling, endless meetings. I suspect that I’d come to feel that my days are composed of second rate  activities, with a great many out of my control. Would I have coped? I am certain that I would have, but I might well have become nostalgic about my former role as dean.

   Vartan Gregorian (look him up) of whom I saw a lot when he too was a dean, knew something of my search shenanigans and their lack of success. “Rudy,” he once said, “you are too honest.” By that he surely did not mean that I should have fibbed or dissembled. What I do take him to have meant is “Rudy, you are two academic”—both in the unflattering sense and with the positive meaning. And I think he was right.

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¹What I really wanted to do after I had stepped down as dean was head some small art museum. Two knowledgeable people however discouraged me from pursuing that goal at length. Jim Wood, then head of the Art Institute, was most friendly but skeptical. “For such a job you should really have a doctorate in art history.” The other was an officer of a major search firm with whom I had been friendly. She said (this was in 1987) that no museum search committee would consider me unless they had failed at least twice to land a more standard candidate for their job. Neither thought it made any difference that as dean I had brought both an art history department and a department of studio art from below nowhere into a top rank.

²That term, derived from the German, “Jacke,” (Jacket) refers to German Jews (who tended to wear more formal clothes), with special attention to their excessive punctilious attention to detail.