So many great presidents though:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/20/opinion/robert-zimmer-chicago-speech.html
I dont know… he is probably a good guy but why is he getting credit for an established UChicago tradition? I would like to believe that with or without him, UChicago will defend academic freedoms.
I’ve always thought that the UChicago job is the hardest given the schools location, its vulnerability to Chicago disfuntional politics, the depth and breadth of the schools programs and the related demands from stakeholders for excellence. I say, congratulations Dr. Zimmer! But who knows. And it is kind of a homer job since Bret Stephens is a UChicago alum. And really, I think, he was using the University as an example of how free speech can and mostly does work.
The really tough job is, I think, being president of Harvard. As I understand it, the Harvard president has radically less power vis a vis deans and faculties of the various units than presidents at other universities, including Chicago. The norm is a business-like CEO model, while Harvard seems to have a weak-medieval-king model. Also, for all that Harvard owns, it doesn’t actually own or control a bunch of stuff that other universities (and their presidents) do, like the hospitals associated with its medical school, or the buildings housing student organizations. To all that, add various faculties that are almost certainly, person for person, the most entitled prima donnas in the world (certainly including dozens of people who think they were more qualified than you for your job), alumni who are if anything more entitled and full of themselves than the faculties, and press who want you to be the pope of higher education. And outside your office, a mob of angry Asians with 1600 SATs, 36 ACTs, 4.3 unweighted GPAs, 10 APs (all 5s), torches, pitchforks, and Justice Department lawyers . . .
A tough list for sure. But the UChicago President on occasion has to share the dais with Rahm Emanuel which to me would be more onerous than all those other things put together.
@FStratford Good point about getting credit for an established UChicago tradition. Hoping when he accepts the award, he’ll acknowledge all those before him who had the courage and insight to have initiated and perpetuated it, and to have it culminate with such a prestigious honor. Hope he’ll accept it and represent all those who have come before him, who have enabled him to eventually now articulate it, loudly and boldly.
(I’m including students too, as I really believe it’s the students who make any school great.)
@JHS Thanks for the insight into Harvard, and presidents in general. I do have much respect for Harvard as an institution. Interesting.
@JHS Actually – No. The President of Harvard is ex oficio the preeminent voice world-wide in higher education. Nobody else even comes close. Once elected, he/she is able to shape the Presidency and take it in any general direction consistent with his/her vision as articulated upon appointment. The current outgoing President has turned Harvard into just another politically correct socially engineered school, notwithstanding the consternation of many powerful alums.
Yeah, and look what happened to her predecessor who resisted that?
I “know” – not first- or second-hand, but through a pretty reliable grapevine – that before Faust was appointed several successful presidents of other universities politely declined to be considered when approached. Too much headache, too many bosses.
Summers offended the prevailing Zeitgeist. Unlike UChicago, when you do that at Harvard, you are dead.
If Harvard was like that – it was! – when Larry Summers was president, what is Drew Faust’s culpability for Harvard still being like that?
Hey, @Chrchill, Drew Faust brought ROTC back to Harvard - give her some credit…
All kidding aside, she hadn’t been in office very long before the global financial crisis hit, the endowment lost $11b in value and a lot of really tough decisions had to be made, including putting the Allston campus on hold. Since then, she’s presided over the capital campaign that’s raised close to $7b and Allston’s been restarted.
I think the turmoil at Harvard Management Company (which, by the way, was precipitated by some of those powerful alumni) could have been handled better, as could the ongoing social group drama. She’s not the most charismatic leader, either. I’d give her a B, all things considered. I certainly don’t think she’s made Harvard into something it wasn’t already.
Stirring up a little trouble here, but following is an ACTA article about a UChicago pres. who probably did NOT get the Excellence in Liberal Arts Education award *:
*But most likely because the award didn’t exist at that time 
delete
Sorry - posted ^^ accidentally before finishing.
Reminiscing a bit about Larry Summers . … . he certainly opened up a hornets nest with that comment about women’s aptitude for math and sciences. IIRC it was not a gratuitous statement but offered in the context of an NBER conference on the position of women in science. The result, of course, was outrage from all the women scientists in the room with a good number of them walking out, etc. If anyone was able to counter the research he provided, it wasn’t reported. Were his statements provocative? Absolutely. Were they appropriate to the setting? Absolutely - the conference (or at least his talk) was concerning the small numbers of women in STEM (at the time) and the audience consisted of academics and researchers - in other words, experts clearly capable of addressing and debating the issue objectively and without a head of steam. Instead, because his talk countered the prevailing viewpoint with conclusions that were, uh, not exactly “politically correct”, it was another nail in the coffin of his presidency. An interesting thought given that the subject is academic freedom.