Harvard vs Chicago: Walking down different paths

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
21

"I have never heard of an organized effort by alums to place on the Board an advocate for a particular policy. "

Best guess is that the alumnae association committee vets these candidates so isn’t about to rock the going to rock the boat much either. Someone campaigning for real change might face the biggest hurdle just trying to get nominated or have his/her name included via a write-on option.

22

As I counted, Chicago has 49 trustees besides the president, of whom 19 are undergraduate alumni, 3 received PhDs (but only one of those was not also an undergraduate), and 7 (not counting the president) did not attend the university. (Maybe 6; one is a Lab alum. Hard to complain about that on a board this size.) The Chicago board is absolutely dominated by MBA (21) and Law alums (8) (significant overlap with the undergraduates there, too), and by financial types (well over half). There are lots of non-financial business people, too, which I think is good, and a variety of nonprofit types.

The contrast with the Yale board is really striking. The Yale board has 16 members other than the president, and all (and the president, too) have Yale degrees: 11 undergraduates, 3 pure PhDs (plus the president), one JD, and one MBA. A couple of the undergraduates have a professional degree from Yale, too. Only 8 of them are financial types, and that includes at least one decidedly old-school banker.

23

Sorry for the flurry of posts - playing “catch-up” here and the comments are quite interesting so worth a response . . .

  1. Harvard (and probably Yale and Princeton based on what @surelyhuman is saying upthread and @JHS in #21) has a governance structure that is quite different from that of most other more “modern” universities. Could be wrong but guessing that the latter is larger overall with a higher number of self-perpetuating members. The Harvard Corp. in contrast, is the smaller of the two governing bodies of that university, and the larger (the board of overseers) is currently 100% elected by degree holders. Thought I read at one point that they replaced the local clergy in the area - which probably happened a while ago! So we can see very different governance depending on age - or other aspects - of the university.

Edit to add: the makeup ie MBA/finance vs. others, is particularly interesting.

  1. @surelyhuman posted “My guess is that if there were a lot of alum appointed trustees on Chicago’s board, the postures of the college towards free speech and other controversial issues for example may have been very different.” My own guess is that a good number of the students admitted in the past three years - and their families - are overwhelmingly in favor of the the board’s stance on free speech. By changing the admissions policy to aggressively admit ED’s, Nondorf/Zimmer has changed the type of alum who graduates (it helps, too, if they graduate employed or headed to a top grad school, and that they enjoy their College experience. That’s why there have been so many changes over the past few years). Anyway, over the long-term, the college alumnae and their association are probably expected to see eye to eye with the board on that issue. We have to remember, as well, that this university has faced LOTS of challenges to free inquiry over the decades. Even back when the board was primarily outside business men cowering at all the bad press about the University of Chicago indoctrinating their students in Communist ideology(!), the university survived. It’s likely to survive the next challenge to free speech, even had Nondorf not cleverly re-engineered a good one-third of the student body.
24

Looking only at the nineteen College alumni I do not see a very activist group. Nor a very young one: most graduated in the seventies and eighties; only a couple as late as the nineties. I daresay several might have thought of themselves during undergrad days as politically radical. Time and experience, reading and pondering, had not yet fully formed them. It will be that way with you and your classmates, @surelyhuman . A first-rate education frees the mind of fashionable cant. One of your favorite authors, Anthony Kronman, says this repeatedly in his recent book and doesn’t draw back from an autobiographical account of his own pilgrimage from his student days of the sixties, when every young person was absolutely certain that utopia was around the corner (or, if not that, then apocalypse).

Debate with utmost passion the truth of politics and everything else under the sun - that’s the Chicago way - but remember that the coin of the realm here is openness to being wrong. Let’s hope these Trustees imbibed that ethos.

25

I find it really interesting that Hanna Gray was on the Harvard Corporation board in 2001 and the biggest supporter of Summers and pushed for his choice over then Michigan President Bollinger who was the other main contender.

She really disliked what she perceived as the lack of rigor in the outgoing President Neil Rudenstine’s approach and his almost exclusive focus on fundraising :slight_smile:

Do you think Summers would succeed in Chicago?. Clearly his tenure at Harvard was less than successful

He was brought in to revamp the College and revitalize Science among other priorities

26

Gray has always been an outspoken champion of rigor, free inquiry, and other things that universities are actually supposed to be doing. She is no shrinking violet in the face of controversy. In 1969, Gray headed up the faculty committee that determined the fate of that sociology prof. at UChicago - the one who was the catalyst for the student uprising and occupation of the admin. building. University administrations who have preferred cow towing to student “demands” over the past few years would be flummoxed by that situation, as her leadership and the committee recommendation to terminate (with maybe a “transition year” for the prof) was unwavering in the face of chaos. By the time she took the helm at Chicago, she had already been dean of Weinberg College at NU and provost at Yale. She was a rightly-admired university leader. I thought of her as a literal giant (she is an imposing figure) but she was a giant in other ways too.

27

Summers as UC President . . . hmm. He’s not young now, and would be nearing 70 when Zimmer’s tenure is up. To my knowledge he hasn’t even been asked to join the econ. dept. More saltwater than freshwater. Also, when you cover up corruption to help your friend, you kind of disqualify yourself. He’s probably damaged goods now. Finaly, - and probably the most important thing of all - he most likely simply isn’t interested given where he’s been and what he’s done. UC pres. might be seen as a pretty unglamorous job.

28

BTW, I find it amusing that Summers was (perhaps incorrectly, it turns out) hailed as Harvard’s “first Jewish president.” And Drew Faust later on - Harvard’s first woman president! How old was the school by the times these “historic” appointments were made, exactly?

By focusing on stuff like talent and vision, rather than race, ethnic identity or gender, the Chicago trustees were able to blast through such milestones decades ago. Although, to be fair, Summers was hired in part due to the fact that he understood such mysterious concepts like finite resources and budgets. Presidents have to make tough decisions sometimes.

29

@JBStillFlying Oh, i didn’t mean Summers as UC President after Zimmer. I was simply thinking “Could Summers have succeeded as President of UChicago”, given his temperament. In other words, would his fit have been better at Chicago than at Harvard? or would the outcome have been about the same at Chicago as it was at Harvard?

Another way of asking the same question would be “Would Zimmer be successful as Harvard’s President?”

In other words are Presidents at these two Universities essentially interchangeable? Or are these schools so different that a failure at one could succeed wildly at the other and a success at one may be an abject failure at the other.

30

“I was simply thinking “Could Summers have succeeded as President of UChicago”, given his temperament. In other words, would his fit have been better at Chicago than at Harvard? or would the outcome have been about the same at Chicago as it was at Harvard?”

OK, @surelyhuman - because you asked:

Given his temperament? The answer: NO. Larry Summers is So Smart . . . (‘How Smart Is He???’) . . that he’s the only non-idiot in a room . . . full of nothing but other Harvard Faculty. That’s the joke.

But this is not a joke: He was asked about the scene linked below and verified that it did, indeed, happen this way. When he was then asked who the source could have been, he replied that he was the source. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3JtmZugzl4

There are lots of other stories from very reliable witnesses to Larry Summer’s treatment of others. IMO, he doesn’t hold a candle in either maturity or talent to his worthy relatives Paul Samuelson and Ken Arrow. Although Uncle Paul was a bit of a jerk as well, I understand.

31

"Another way of asking the same question would be “Would Zimmer be successful as Harvard’s President?” . . . "“In other words are Presidents at these two Universities essentially interchangeable? Or are these schools so different that a failure at one could succeed wildly at the other and a success at one may be an abject failure at the other.”

IMO Zimmer would not work out well at Harvard and the latter wouldn’t be asking anyway. UChicago is a different university - in philosophy and goals - than Harvard. And they have different priorities. As just one example: Zimmer advocates for freedom of speech and academic inquiry. Harvard restricts association with the “wrong clubs.”

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/5/6/college-sanctions-clubs-greeklife/

32

I hope that UChicago would never have a President like Summers. He is more about himself than the job. His biases against a multitude of groups of people is diametrically opposed to UChicago’s ethos of open inquiry and inclusion.

33

^ And actually, from what I’ve heard he hasn’t published anything since he got tenure at Harvard. Not to dump on the guy for that, but it does appear that he was using his position not to better the field of macroeconomics but as a stepping stone for more glamorous jobs . . . It’s too bad too. Apparently his early work was quite impressive. One doesn’t (didn’t used to) get tenure at Harvard for producing schlock.

Chicago’s presidents tend to be pretty influential scholars in their own right.

34

Following up on UC presidents, Levi is one who doesn’t get enough recognition (other than the Ad building now being named after him . . . ). Seven years at the helm and memorable quotes such as this:

"The University of Chicago … does not exist to increase the earning power of its students. It does not exist to train the many technicians needed for our society, nor to develop inventions important for industry.

While it is and should be a good neighbor, it does not exist to be a redevelopment agency for the South Side of Chicago.

Its primary purpose is not to be a college where students can find themselves free of the pressure of the discipline of learning.

It does not exist to be a series of experimental political and social communities, nor is its institutional purpose to be found in the leadership by it of new liberal or conservative causes.

… while its faculty and students will individually respond to a variety of political and social commitments, the purpose of the University continues to be intellectual, not moral.

… its greatest service is in its commitment to reason, in its search for basic knowledge, in its mission to preserve and to give continuity to the values of mankind’s many cultures. In a time when the intellectual values are denigrated, this service was never more required."

And this:

"The University of Chicago exists for the life of the mind. Its primary purpose is intellectual. It exists to increase the intellectual understanding and powers of mankind. The commitment is to the powers of reason.

Levi was president during the Great Sit-In of 1968-69, and chose to wait out the protestors rather than call in police or negotiate. Read about it here: https://www.chicagomaroon.com/2008/12/02/the-sit-in-40-years-later/

The sit-in resulted in 40-some odd expulsions and a host of suspensions. Imagine that happening today!

Levi resigned the presidency in '75 in order to become the new AG under the Ford administration, which explains his brief(er) tenure at Chicago than some of his predecessors.

He was also the only(?) president to have attended the university from Lab to Law. And most of his academic career was spent there as well.