by side at Penn during my first five years, when he was provost, before he went to be the president of Indiana University. He was leaving IU now, so we had a lot to discuss about our futures. He had decided that he didn’t want to do another university presidency, though there were a couple of great ones pursuing him. He and Ellen were headed back to Palo Alto to lead a more civilized existence near their children. When I told him that I was a bit at a loss to know how to pursue the NEH chairmanship, he told me that I should call Joe Duffy, who Tom thought was the most wired-in person in Washington. Joe was then the president of American University, though he soon joined the Clinton administration as the director of USIA. I had known him for some time. In addition, he could tell me something about the NEH; he had served a term as chairman as the appointee of President Jimmy Carter.
I called Joe in late January, not long after I got back from San Diego. He was extremely nice and very helpful. By then I knew that one of the pieces of paper with my name on it had fluttered onto the right stack in the right office at the right time and that my name had once been somewhere on a long list of people being considered for the NEH. David Morse, Penn’s excellent director of federal relations, had called John Hammer, director of the National Humanities Alliance, the coalition of scholarly and public organizations that benefit from NEH grants, and learned that my name was not being pursued because it was thought that I was not interested. I told Joe Duffy this bit of gossip, and he promised to find out what the state of play was, and also to pass on the word that I really would be interested.
This was after the Inauguration, so the appointment process was now being handled by Bruce Lindsey’s Office of Presidential Personnel, and the transition team had melted away. David Morse had also been able to construct a list of “mentions,” people whose names were being unofficially circulated as possibilities among various interested organizations in order to gauge the possible reception of their nomination. There were nine on David’s list, and I knew seven of them relatively well, and they were all attractive candidates. The good news here was that it was not yet done; I was not too late.
Bolstered by this information, on January 29 I called Senator Harris Wofford, whom I had known since his days as president of Bryn Mawr College. I asked him if he could help me, assuming that he did not have another horse in the race. He was immediately supportive. Not only did he not have another candidate for the NEH, but his candidate for Secretary of Education had not been picked, and he thought Clinton needed to appoint some people from the big industrial states like Pennsylvania that had supported him. It sounded like a good argument to me. I began to practice my Rocky imitation, though it usually comes out sounding more like the southside in Birmingham than south Philly.
Harris said he would go all out for me. He then advised me to get as many endorsements as possible from influential folks, politicians and others. We went over some names. He urged me to get Marion Wright Edelman to speak to Hillary for me. I said that if I approached it right, I could probably get Lucy to speak to Hillary as well. I was beginning to get the hang of this thing.
I was also getting excited about what I could do at the NEH. Joe Duffy had told me that it was more of a day-to-day management job than people realized, a useful warning because Bill Bennett and Lynne Cheney had turned it into a conservative pulpit. I remember thinking at about this time that I had great respect for what the NEH did; I thought I could do the internal management of the agency, the politics of the humanities community, the lobbying of Congress, and still have time and energy to perform as a depoliticized spokesperson for the humanities in American life, and to help the NEH create some exciting new programs.
Harris’s follow-through was impressive. He called Bruce Lindsey immediately. I am sure he had a number of things to take up with Lindsey, but he also put in a word for me. I also got busy. I called Philadelphia Congressmen Tom Foglietta and Bill Gray; both were supportive. Bill Gray, a member of the Democratic leadership in the House, called Bruce Lindsey on my behalf. I began to ask other friends, like Robert Brustein, director of the American Repertory Theater at Harvard, to write to Lindsey about me.
Meanwhile, Mike Aiken and Rick Nahm let me know that they were about to be selected to head other institutions, Mike to be chancellor of the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, and Rick to become president of Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. I had contingency plans ready. After appropriate consultations, I would name Marvin Lazerson, dean of the School of Education, to act as provost, and I would simply promote Ginny Clark, associate V.P. for Development and Alumni Relations, to succeed Rick. There was, however, a timing problem presented by the search for the new executive vice president (EVP). I could not really announce that I planned to step down on June 30, 1994, until the EVP had been named. Naturally, I would have to tell that person what was about to happen, and that would make the selling of the job a little harder.
My dual life was far from boring, as a reconstruction of February 3, 1993, indicates. My day started at 8:30 A.M. with a briefing of a large group of trustees by our financial team on a “sources and uses” analysis of University finances, tracing more clearly than ever before where our revenues came from and how they flowed within the institution. That meeting dissolved into a meeting of the Trustees’ special Long Range Planning Committee where Bill Kelley, the dean of the medical school and CEO of the medical center, successfully presented his strategic plan for the medical center. Those crucial discussions occupied the morning. Between 2 and 3 P.M., I conferred with the general counsel, Shelley Green, and the vice provost for research, Barry Cooperman, about a suit against the University by a company accusing our faculty of leaking its trade secrets about solid-state batteries. Between 4 and 5 P.M., Mike Aiken and I met with the faculty senate executive committee, about a committee report recommending changes in the “just cause” procedures, the process through which faculty members can be disciplined, which had just failed miserably to handle a case of faculty plagiarism. I spent the evening, from 6 P.M. to 10 P.M. at the annual football banquet, which was very upbeat.
During the little empty spaces in the day, especially between 3 and 4 P.M., I did my telephoning. Among my calls that day was one from Harris Wofford, who reported that he had talked to Bruce Lindsey again and that Bruce had said that my name was on a short list for the NEH. He also assured Harris, with what I imagine was a bit of exasperation, that, yes, he understood how distinguished I was. I remember thinking at this point how frustrating it was to be working in the dark; no one from the White House had gotten in touch with me to make an assessment of how well I might be expected to do the job. I had no chance to speak for myself. It also felt strange to know that the White House’s ultimate selection would be heavily influenced by political consideration, what constituency or person it wanted to please, and what message might be communicated by the selection of a particular person. My value, initially at least, was purely symbolic. I could only line up my support and hope for the best.
I left the next day for an alumni speaking engagement and fund-raising excursion in Florida. Lucy was in Montgomery caring for her mother after an operation to repair a broken hip, so I traveled alone. I spent a delightful evening on Key Biscayne in the home of Carlos and Rosa de la Cruz; Carlos was a Penn alumnus who had been extremely successful in business. Ironically, Carlos and Rosa, whom I do not think of as arrogant, left-wing elitists, collect the work of Andres Serrano, the Latino artist whose “Piss Christ” ignited one of the most ferocious attacks by Jesse Helms and the religious right on funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.
After my work was done, I went up the coast to spend the rest of the weekend with Don and Ann Brown at their place at Frenchman’s Creek. Ann, an active consumer advocate, was waging a quiet campaign for appointment to be chair of the Consumer Products Safety Commission. We had fun swapping stories about the process. She also was successful in her quest and was a brilliant success in the job.
I returned to Philadelphia that Monday, February 8, to find some messages from David Morse who had been trolling for information in Washington. He reported that John Hammer had been asked by the White House whether there were any negatives about me in the humanities community. We don’t see the wind; we just see the ripples on the water.
The
