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Probing the Presidency
In the wake of Benno Schmidt’’s sudden resignation, Yale is being forced to focus on how dramatically the job of running the university has changed.
October 1992
by Jennifer Kaylin
Jennifer Kaylin’s most recent piece for this magazine was “How Safe Is Yale?,” in the February 1992 issue.
When Benno C. Schmidt Jr. announced on May 25 that he was resigning after only
six years as President of Yale, the shock waves reached well beyond New Haven.
It was not just Schmidt’s departure, but also the conflicting emotions it provoked that prompted
articles in virtually every national publication from the New York Times and Newsweek to the Wall Street Journal and Vanity Fair. Intensifying the reaction were the suddenness of the announcement and the job
for which Schmidt was leaving—head of the Edison Project, a controversial effort to develop a chain of
for-profit private schools. How, Schmidt’s critics demanded, could anyone abandon an institution of Yale’s stature for an organization many felt might undermine public education?
But should the news really have been such a surprise? After all, his contentious
relationship with the Yale faculty was well known, as was the fact that he
faced a $15-million budget deficit. Many students and administrators resented
what they felt was his remote style of leadership and his frequent absences
from campus. Moreover, he had just launched what was sure to be a grueling
$1.5-billion capital fund drive. Even without such burdens, however, Schmidt
could be seen as right in step with a rapidly changing world of higher
education, where even a presidency isn’t what it used to be.
Whatever the final verdict on Schmidt’s years in office, it is the radical changes in the nature of that office that
are making the search for a successor more challenging than any that has gone
before. And Yale is hardly alone in confronting such a task. Indeed, the
presidents of Stanford, Duke, the University of Chicago, and Columbia have all
announced their resignations within the past year. One quarter of New England’s more than 200 colleges and universities have experienced changes at the top in
the past two years, and there’s been a complete turnover at New England’s six state universities since 1990. But because of Yale’s prominence, the reasons behind the loss of its most recent President and the
process of finding a new one are attracting unprecedented scrutiny both inside
and outside the University.
According to Richard C. Hoy of the New England Board of Higher Education, the
average tenure for the president of an independent college or university is now
a mere seven years, down from about ten years only a decade ago. While Hoy
recognizes that presidents leave for a variety of reasons, he says there are
several core factors that are conspiring to make the job more demanding than
ever. They include the persistently ailing economy, which has made fundraising
more difficult and has forced administrators to lay off professors and
eliminate departments; a fall-off in federal funds; a shrinking applicant pool;
deteriorating host cities; and changing public attitudes about the value of a
college education. “It’s far less rewarding to be a college president now than it was in 1980,” says Hoy.
Derek Bok, who stepped down as president of Harvard last year after what now
seems like an eternity (20 years), says that while university presidents don’t have to deal with the campus unrest that characterized the previous
generation, today, increased administrative and fundraising duties make the job
ever more burdensome.t The crux of the problem, according to Bok, is that universities tend to select
their presidents from the world of scholarship, which means that people who may not be skilled as administrators are hired to perform jobs that
leave them little time to do anything but administrate. In order to avoid the
burnout that has afflicted so many college presidents lately, Bok recommends
that the job be restructured to spread the pressures of fundraising and
off-campus representation among more people. This is particularly important, he
says, so that a president can spend more time on campus. “If a crisis occurs,” says Bok, “you don’t want the faculty and students saying, ‘Where’s the president?’”
Thomas Gerety, ’69, the president of Trinity College in Hartford, has a somewhat different
perspective on the problem. He says that one of the things that make it especially hard to be a
college president today is the public’s often negative perception of the job. “The reservoir of faith in our leaders and institutions has dried up,” says Gerety. “Look at Benno. He was out there fundraising with spectacular success, making
sharp decisions at Yale, keeping together his central constituency, and yet
people were challenging the integrity of his decision making.”
The list of roles a president is required to play has been growing for some
time, of course, and now includes chief fundraiser, educational visionary,
labor negotiator, faculty colleague, parent-figure to the student body, friend
to the alumni, and master of town-gown relations. Judging by the overwhelmingly
positive response to the naming of Howard Lamar, a Sterling Professor of
History, on June 17 to serve as Yale’s acting president, it would seem that members of the Yale community are
confident they’ve got someone who can—at least temporarily—play virtually all of those parts. At a 30-minute news conference held in
William L. Harkness Hall to announce Lamar’s appointment, the audience of faculty and administrators gave him three
standing ovations. Frederick Rose, ’44E, a Yale trustee who was sitting next to Sid R. Bass, ’65, a fellow member of the Yale Corporation, admitted later that both men had
tears in their eyes. “I’ve been at Yale since 1950, when I was an undergraduate,” said Gaddis Smith, the Larned Professor of History, “and I’ve never known an occasion of such warmth and sincerity.”
But while the outpouring of emotion at the news conference reflected both respect
and affection for Lamar—a member of the Yale faculty for 43 years—it was also a measure of the ill will that had been building against Schmidt in
some quarters almost since he took up his post in 1986. “He really was Mr. Inside,” says Matthew Broder, ’81, ’87MPPM, a state of Connecticut development official. “The areas where he shone were behind closed doors, in small groups, and in
one-on-one kinds of things. You see that in his unbelievable ability to solicit
significant amounts of money for the University.” Schmidt’s shortcoming, says Broder, was what he sees as a lack of commitment to Yale as
a place. “Benno never really fell in love with it,” says Broder. “In some fundamental way he just didn’t understand that there was more to the job than fundraising. With Bart
Giamatti, you saw him around so much you wondered if he ever left; with Benno,
you wondered if he was ever there.”
Henry Chauncey Jr., ’57, who was secretary of the University under President Kingman Brewster, has
known Schmidt since his undergraduate days. Chauncey calls him a “tragic figure,” a “good man” who “attacked things exactly the right way,” but was brought down by his inability to persuasively communicate the rationale
behind his actions, and then “turned himself over to the hucksters.”
Paul Johnston, an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, is even
harsher, calling Schmidt a “bean counter” and an “organization man.” “His basic problem,” Johnston says, “was his style as a leader. He showed no sense of paying attention to the human
side of the organization.” Johnston, whose department was targeted by Schmidt’s administration for some major cuts, is also critical of the former President
for embracing a “medieval” educational philosophy, assuming that “it is possible and reasonable for a university to remain aloof and distant from
the afflictions of the world.”
Few would have predicted in 1986 that Schmidt would ever be the victim of such
attacks. On paper, he appeared to be the perfect choice for a Yale President.
The son of a wealthy financier, Schmidt attended Phillips Exeter Academy and
Yale College, where, he concedes, his experience was characterized by “more joy than wisdom.” Nevertheless, he graduated near the top of his class at Yale Law School,
clerked for Chief Justice Earl Warren, served in the Justice Department, and
was highly regarded as dean of the Columbia Law School. Indeed, when Michael
Sovern, the president of Columbia, heard that Yale was looking for a new
president, he was quoted as saying, “Just don’t take Benno Schmidt.” When Yale did exactly that, the consensus was that it had scored a great coup.
The honeymoon did not last long. The first major sign of trouble came in October
of 1988, when Schmidt appointed Michael Levine as the dean of the School of Organization and Management.
Together, Schmidt and Levine undertook a radical restructuring of the SOM program, a move that angered faculty and students alike, as much for the abrupt
fashion in which it was carried out as for the changes themselves.
Charges that Schmidt was inaccessible and practiced a secretive and autocratic
management style added steadily to a lingering resentment among many in the
Yale community over his decision not to move his family from New York City to
New Haven. And last winter, after the release of plans to cut back on staff and
some academic programs to deal with an anticipated deficit, the faculty staged
what amounted to an all-out revolt against his leadership. Following vociferous protests by faculty members and the formation of a governance
committee to examine the relationship among the President, the deans, and the
faculty, Schmidt backed down, agreeing to review the proposals. He agreed to
study further the targeted areas and aim for smaller faculty cuts. In March,
Provost Frank Turner—who had overseen the restructuring plan—announced that he would resign at the end of the academic year. The next month,
Donald Kagan, the dean of Yale College, also announced his resignation. And the
day after Commencement, Schmidt himself stepped down. In early September,
Michael Finnerty, the vice president for finance and administration, followed
Schmidt to the Edison Project, making the sweep of Yale’s top management all but complete.
Schmidt is not without his defenders, for both his tenure as President and his
decision to join the Edison Project, a division of the communications empire
run by Christopher Whittle. Among them is George Bush, ’48, who telephoned Schmidt from Air Force One a few days after he announced his resignation to commend the 50-year-old
educator for his work at Yale. Vernon R. Loucks Jr. ’57, the senior fellow of the Yale Corporation, praises Schmidt for strengthening
Yale on a number of fronts, most notably by being the most successful
fundraiser in its history. Loucks also notes that Schmidt did much to improve
the relationship between Yale and the city of New Haven. (The city’s mayor, John C. Daniels, said news of Schmidt’s resignation “hit me almost as if someone in my own family had died.”) Loucks further credits Schmidt for negotiating strike-free agreements with
Yale’s union work force and for launching a massive effort to refurbish the
University’s aging buildings. “Frankly, I don’t think Yale ever had a stronger President,” says Loucks. “There’s a certain brass quality to him. I’ve heard him ask people for $10 million, $20 million, and I never heard anyone
say no. He’s the most aggressive pursuer of a challenge I’ve ever known.”
Another Schmidt loyalist is United States senator from Oklahoma David L. Boren, ’63, a Yale trustee who has known Schmidt since they were undergraduates
together. “Benno’s greatest strength,” says Boren, “is his toughness and intellectual discipline to make difficult decisions.” But even Boren tempers his praise. “Benno’s weakness was in communicating the reasons for his decisions,” he says. “When I spoke to him about this, he would say, in essence, ‘I have only so many hours in a day. I don’t need the accolades. I don’t care about the public relations.’ Ultimately this was a mistake, but it was the mistake of a good heart motivated
by a sense of responsibility.”
Virtually everyone concedes Schmidt’s skill at raising money. Charles Pagnam, the development office’s director of principal gifts, recalls a marathon fundraising trip the two men
took together. “We went to five cities—New York, Dallas, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis—all within three days,” he says. “We’d arrive late at night, have a full day of meetings, then take the ‘red eye’ to the next city. When it was all over, we came home with $40 million.” According to Pagnam, it was Schmidt who pressed for the bruising schedule: “He was the one who said ‘Let’s do it.’”
While Schmidt’s performance at Yale’s helm may have drawn mixed reviews, the way in which he and Whittle handled his
departure—announcing it within hours of Commencement (having discussed it in advance with the New York Times before telling his own administrators ), vanishing almost immediately from the
campus, and stumping for the Edison Project on national television while still
officially in office—was almost universally panned. Adding to the dismay was the widespread feeling
that Schmidt’s new entrepreneurial role was somehow beneath the dignity of a Yale President.
Schmidt isn’t surprised by any of the criticism, which he says is inevitable when the leader
of an institution as steeped in tradition as Yale presses for substantive
change. “I have been, for better or worse, a President who, after wide consultation, didn’t always choose the consensus course,” he said during an interview at his home in New York. “I didn’t think the job was necessarily to reflect the consensus. I did what I thought
was right. Anyone who takes controversy head-on, who looks at the relationship
between the present and the future and refuses to mortgage the future in order
to conserve the present, is going to take some knocks.”
Speaking in the garden of his Manhattan brownstone, Schmidt appeared relaxed, yet
eager to offer his side of the story. He wore a checked shirt, gray slacks,
loafers, and his trademark wire-rimmed glasses. He chose his words with
lawyerly precision, and, although it had been almost two months since he
stepped down as President, he continued to use the words “we,” “our,” and “us” when referring to himself and Yale. “It’s not possible to serve at Yale without feeling a sense that this is your
family,” he explained. “There are people there I’ve grown to love. It becomes a part of your blood.”
When Schmidt took over as President, he says, he quickly determined that change
was needed on several fronts. Thus, he launched a massive building-renovation
campaign to eliminate what he describes as the “grisly Dickensian squalor” in which students and faculty were asked to live and work. He also set out to
create what he called a “new era of good will” with the city of New Haven, and a period of “sensible, non-disruptive” labor relations with the University’s unions. On the subject that garnered him the most praise, fundraising, he says
he decided that Yale needed to “build a whole new level of alumni support,” and he made a conscious decision to channel his energy into that, rather than
to serve as some sort of “super dean” of Yale College. “When there are campus eruptions, it’s a mistake to assume that the President should leap into the midst of every
intramural fray,” he says.
Asked about the timing of his resignation, Schmidt says, “I felt for a lot of reasons that it would not be good for Yale or me to be in a
lame-duck situation. I was headed for other responsibilities, and knew I wouldn’t be able to hold them at a distance. I felt Yale needed a forceful presence in
Woodbridge Hall, so when I said I was leaving, I felt I should leave.” He says he delayed announcing his plans because he wanted to function at “maximum capacity” while searching for new deans for the Architecture, Forestry, and Graduate
Schools. He told the trustees on Commencement weekend, he says, because they
were meeting in New Haven at that time and because he wanted to give them as
much time as possible to make plans for the succession.
Schmidt also has an answer for those who say the Edison Project is an elitist
endeavor that could undermine public education. “Believe me, I thought a lot about that, and if I thought it would damage public
education, I’d never do it,” he says. What attracted Schmidt to the Edison Project was, he says, an
opportunity to inject some competition and choice into elementary education: “Problems are inevitable when you have a monopoly, particularly one run by
government bureaucracies. The chances of reform within the existing system are
so small that I felt the best hope was to demonstrate a system that can do
better.”
How could he leave Yale for such a speculative venture? “Yale and higher education in general are really in very good shape; it’s the best in the world by far,” Schmidt says. “But elementary and secondary education are a lot worse off. It felt a little
incongruous to be resting at the apex when the foundations are crumbling.”
Whatever the merits of Schmidt’s reasons for leaving the Presidency, Yale’s trustees now face a formidable task in searching for a successor in a uniquely
difficult time for higher education. Few people know more about how the job has
changed than Henry Chauncey, who is compiling the papers of A. Whitney
Griswold, who served as President from 1951–63, and Kingman Brewster (1964–77).
“Whit Griswold had one appointment in the morning and one in the afternoon,” Chauncey says. “He’d make four or five alumni visits a year, and on reunion weekend, he’d have dinner with the 25th reunion class.” In contrast, Schmidt’s calendar typically contained appointments from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., 20 or more
alumni visits a year, and stopovers at every class gathering on reunion
weekends. Fundraising in Griswold’s day was, according to Chauncey, a “genteel, measured endeavor,” not the punishing marathon affair that it has become.
The Presidency, which once allowed time for scholarship, teaching, writing, and
socializing with faculty and students, has not only grown more time-consuming,
it has become vastly more complex as each succeeding occupant of Woodbridge Hall has enlarged the scope of the job. Brewster faced a highly
politicized campus, torn asunder by the civil rights movement and the Vietnam
War. Giamatti was plagued by labor strife, while Schmidt faced a recession, the
effects of 50 years of deferred maintenance on the physical plant, and the
worsening social and economic problems of New Haven.
It’s safe to say that the demands of the job are likely to grow still greater in
the coming years. Ask members of the Yale community what talents a new
President should possess and the list grows long indeed. The most frequently mentioned attributes are
scholarship, a flair for fundraising, an ability to articulate a vision for the
future of Yale, a willingness to consult with faculty, and a desire to
participate in the life of the University.
That last quality is perhaps one of the more elusive ones. For Claire Gaudiani,
who is the president of Connecticut College in New London, it means : “Go to dances and dance. I mean that metaphorically, but I also mean it literally. My husband and I go to school dances. Students cut in, and I think
that’s really important. What a president does—whether it’s to raise money, teach a course, have open office hours, or whatever—says a lot about what that institution values.”
Whether or not the next President enjoys dancing, there is a strong feeling in
some quarters that whoever fills the position should have a very different résumé from the quintessentially Old Blue version Schmidt presented to the last search
committee. There are some who say the time is right for Yale to name a woman.
Just a century ago, Yale’s Graduate School became the first such institution to admit women (see page
58), and the College has been co-educational for 23 years, but so far, the
University has had an uninterrupted string of males at the top. Hannah Gray,
who served as acting president for a year after Brewster resigned to become
ambassador to Great Britain, opened the door a crack, and during the last
search the candidates included Maxine Singer, ’57PhD (YAM, Feb. ’90). There is much talk these days that Judith Rodin (YAM, Nov. ’91), the former dean of the Graduate School who replaced Frank Turner as
provost, could be a leading contender for the job.
Amid all the speculation, Yale’s 17-member Corporation, which bears ultimate responsibility for naming a new
President, is already hard at work. This panel—made up of ten “successor fellows” who serve 12-year terms and are chosen by other successors; six “alumni fellows” who are elected by their classmates; and the acting president—recently appointed a search committee composed of eight fellows of the
Corporation and four members of the faculty.
Robert Wood Lynn, a 1952 graduate of the Divinity School and a successor trustee
of the Corporation, heads the committee and is being assisted by a faculty
counselor, Marie Borroff, a Sterling Professor of English. Boroff is overseeing
the development of the search and helping to arrange the consultation process.
The other members of the committee are: Thomas Appelquist, former chairman of
the physics department; Senator Boren; Jose A. Cabranes, ’65JD; Richard J. Franke, ’53; Joseph G. Gall, ’49, ’52PhD; Gerhard H. Giebisch, Sterling Professor of Cellular and Molecular
Medicine; Abraham S. Goldstein, ’49LLB, Sterling Professor of Law; William L. Kissick, ’53, ’57MD, ’59MPH, ’61DPH (who will serve as alumni liaison for the search committee); Linda Koch
Lorimer, ’77JD; Jules D. Prown, Paul Mellon Professor and chairman of art history; and
Kurt L. Schmoke, ’71, the mayor of Baltimore.
Lynn declined to comment on the search process in detail, saying only that the
committee is working “expeditiously,” talking to a “variety of seasoned observers of higher education.” The goal, he says, is to cast as wide a net as possible, and eventually winnow
the list down to about 12 candidates. Their names will then be submitted to the
Corporation, which will conduct private interviews and background reviews
before making a final choice. The committee hopes to complete its work by
spring.
For the first time in a Yale presidential search there are faculty members on the
committee. Vernon Loucks denies that they were added merely to mollify
professors, many of whom complained of feeling disenfranchised under Schmidt’s leadership. “It had nothing to do with that,” he says. “It’s just plain good judgment. None of us felt totally qualified to identify or
make judgments about faculty members around the country.”
Loucks also dismisses the suggestion from some quarters that a search firm be
hired, claiming it would be an abrogation of the responsibility placed with the
Corporation. He is equally dismissive of the proposal that the trustees draw up
a job description delineating the duties of the President. He did concede,
however, that the Corporation should examine the job with an eye toward
allowing enough time and support for the person to be an on-campus presence. “Tradition operates well at Yale,” says Loucks, “but all of us are of a mind to correct what needs fixing.”
As for charges that the Corporation in the past has been too reactive to what it
perceived as the failings of an outgoing President (some say, for example, that
one of the reasons Schmidt was appointed was that Giamatti, the eloquent
scholar, had trouble handling the unions), Loucks says he doesn’t think that will be the case this time around. “Does the Corporation have a bias? I’m not going to tell you that it doesn’t,” he says. “Scholarship is first and foremost, but beyond that, it’s crazy to have any stereotype in mind. It would be the wrong thing to do.”
Meanwhile, there seems little doubt among members of the Yale community that
Howard Lamar is the right person to stabilize the situation until a permanent
successor is found. A soft-spoken man whose voice still carries a hint of his
Alabama roots, Lamar is an expert on the American West. He teaches a lecture
course that is listed in the catalog as “The Trans-Mississippi West” but is known to undergraduates as “Cowboys and Indians.” So it wasn’t surprising to find him in his new office surrounded by American landscapes and
western genre scenes by Frederic Remington and Albert Bierstadt. A compliment
about the collection elicits a laugh. “Oh no,” he says. “They were here when I moved in. The joke around here is that they offered me the
job so they wouldn’t have to redecorate.”
Among the immediate problems Lamar must face in the coming months are several
faculty appointments and ensuring that the fundraising and building-renovation
campaigns don’t falter. Terry Holcombe, vice president for development and alumni affairs,
notes that in the late 1970s, a large capital campaign survived two
administrative transitions, from Brewster to Gray, and then from Gray to
Giamatti. Drawing on that experience, Holcombe says that a capital campaign
need not be derailed by turnover at the top. “We’re certainly going to miss Benno’s fundraising ability,” he says, “but people give to an institution, not an individual.” He reports that the fund drive has already brought in $600 million toward its
$1.5 billion goal, and that $30 million has arrived since Schmidt’s departure.
For his part, Lamar has vowed that his term as acting president will not be a “holding operation.” He says he plans to maintain the good will that Schmidt established with the
city of New Haven (Lamar once served as a New Haven alderman), and to foster a
bit more of the same on campus. He also promises to keep his office as
accessible as possible, and has named six faculty members to serve as liaison
between himself and his academic colleagues.
But it’s clear that Lamar’s main job will be tending to the bruises sustained by Yale during Schmidt’s tenure. “Since I was appointed acting president, I’ve received probably 500 letters and 300 phone calls, and nearly everyone uses
the word ‘healing,’” Lamar says. “To me, part of healing is listening and talking, keeping up a dialogue with all groups. If we can engage
in a team effort—which I think is characteristic of Yale—then we can establish a basis of common understanding.”
That is the kind of talk that prompts some on campus to say that the Corporation
should keep Lamar in Woodbridge Hall as long as possible. But Lamar insists
that he accepted the assignment only on the condition that it be for a short
term. And while he has already been strikingly effective at making people at
Yale feel more comfortable and secure, he knows as well as anyone that the
University cannot retreat from the problems that Schmidt—whatever his critics may say—identified as critical. Refurbishing the campus, raising money, and improving
town-gown relations will remain top priorities, no matter who becomes the next
President.
The one point on which everybody seems to agree is that the task now before the
Corporation is of utmost importance for the future of the University. “Every President is important,” says Boren, “but once or twice in a century, you have a defining moment. I think we’re facing one of those moments now.”  |
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