Lawrence S. Bacow was inaugurated as the 29th President of Harvard University on October 5, 2018. Even before his inauguration, the new president was busy at work, appointing deans and meeting with fellow administrators. Bacow took the helm of a universitythat faces major issues and ambitions, including social group sanctions, numerous lawsuits, campus expansion, and declining endowment returns. Bacow acknowledged this contentious environment when he entered the presidency, noting in his installation address that never in his lifetime before were there people “questioning the value of higher education.”
President Bacow has a lot of work ahead of him, work for which he is certainly qualified given his administrative experience — first as chancellor of MIT, then president of Tufts University, and finally a member of the Harvard Corporation. While Bacow has taught at MIT for 26 years, it appears that his greatest achievement has been skillful administration, rather than academic excellence alone. Bacow signals that the modern university president is not merely the humble academic they once were, but also the seasoned administrator, indicative of a new era of academic leadership.
Harvard’s Past Presidents
Before Charles Eliot’s presidency (1869–1909), Harvard was a colonial college, where clergymen and the moralist state legislature controlled a classical curriculum. The Harvard presidents of the 18th and 19th centuries fit this mode as men with academic or clerical backgrounds who served as caretakers of this model of education. However, the educational needs of the nation were changing, and in 1869, Charles Eliot began his half-century tenure that would transform Harvard from a parochial school into a modern research university. His successors followed his visions; Presidents A. Lawrence Lowell and James Conant enacted radical changes throughout the 20th century that would define Harvard’s reputation in education.
Each president had a particular guiding philosophy, firmly rooted in an academic tradition. Conant, for example, was a distinguished and prodigious chemist who firmly espoused a meritocratic and egalitarian vision for Harvard’s student body. Such has been the history of Harvard presidents since: academics first, educational visionaries later. The most impactful Harvard presidents were not educational experts; they were academics turned administrators. Drew Faust worked on Civil War history prior to her appointment as dean of the Radcliffe Institute and president of Harvard, overseeing Harvard during the 2008 financial crisis, the beginnings of campus expansion, and a restructuring of the Harvard Management Corporation.
Modern Administrative Needs
In recent years, there has been an explosion of spending, hiring, and expansion in university administration. Diversity officers, building managers, and assistants to assistants all need pay. With college costs at an all-time high and tenure offers at an all-time low, it is easy to blame university administrators for ballooning budgets. But universities are also hiring administrators purposefully. Potential students are potential customers, and a university that can market itself successfully can bring in substantial revenues. Administrators are vital for building fancy new dormitories, student spaces, and other student facilities that are key to attracting students to a campus. An academic might find running a university like a business ideologically antithetical to the ostensible mission of universities, but the benefits of business-like university are far more relevant for the financial stability and administrative health of the university. As in business, knowing how and how much to spend is vital for keeping the institution afloat.
An academic might run a university much in the way Eliot or Conant ran the college, focusing on providing an optimal environment for the independent faculty to teach and research. But the university is now operating on a scale beyond the micromanaging of the presidency. Would a professor promoted dean, who is put in charge of delegating a budget of several hundred million be even somewhat qualified to run a business with an equivalent income flow? The academic-only approach is insufficient for modern-day Harvard, which bears significant administrative needs — including running capital campaigns, managing hundreds of administrators, maintaining and constructing new buildings, and lobbying on Capitol Hill. Having an academics-first vision is ideal for a younger college with less competition, but Harvard’s subordinate deans directly manage academic initiatives, allowing the presidency today to be firmly tied to the administrative and bureaucratic hierarchy.
The Bacow Reorientation
From Presidents Drew Faust to Lawrence Summers, the administrative experience was slowly becoming the dominant aspect of their careers and notoriety. Lifelong educators, the selected presidents started to become administrative leaders who only happened to be in education. Summers was a world-renowned economist, and Drew Faust was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, author of six books, and prolific scholar and academic. Yet before assuming their presidencies, Summers led the U.S. Treasury and the World Bank, and Faust administered the Radcliffe Institute. These are professors who entered with academic visions, approaching the presidency from illustrious academic careers alongside a significant administrative background, combining the modern administrative role with the academic orientation of past presidents.
Bacow’s longer administrative past signals the end of the academic presidency to a new, administrative presidency. He began his career teaching economics at MIT, but has primarily served as a professional administrator for the last two decades. He appears not to have been chosen for his renown as an academic or his vision for educational transformation, but rather for his experience and competence — exemplified by his MIT chancellorship and Tufts presidency.
Bacow’s first decisions as president signify his more conservative, administration-focused approach. He knows how to run a university, and has been instituting his own administrative oversight. He has made his stances firm, dismissing students’ demands for divestment and speaking publicly with evasive care. It is likely more than a coincidence that with the new Harvard Graduate Student Union flexing its muscles, the Harvard Corporation looked favorably on an administrator who has had experience pushing back against student unionization efforts at Tufts. He serves as a tempering force that maintains the status quo, responding to “reason” and not “demands.” A presidency marked by lobbying visits to Washington and international trips to solidify Harvard’s global presence indicate Bacow’s outward-facing strategies. His focus rises above the lower-level academic concerns that were central to the 20th century “empty chair” Harvard presidency; the president today fundraises and builds new campuses rather than planning their new coursework. The presidency has clearly changed, but its influence has persisted.
With the administrative sense to manage a vast research institution, Bacow balances the needs of the businessperson and the academic. Of course, the academic should have concerns about the ever-encroaching business-ification of education, where a profit-focused mindset could see cherished academic institutions like tenure or academic freedom eliminated in favor of maximizing margins. While some universities may go down this unfortunate route, Bacow is still enough of an academic to balance his administrative side. He does not belong among the old educational reformers that dominated Harvard’s early 20th century, but they would have been ill-equipped for the challenges of modern Harvard. Bacow’s presidency and experience signal the end of the academic president and the rise of the administrative president’s new era at Harvard.
Image Source: Flickr/John Morgan