put us in a delicate political situation, making us more vulnerable than usual to the push and pull of political and economic forces in society at large. “Ivory Tower” is less and less appropriate as a metaphor for the position of the university in society.
On campus, a coalition of advocacy groups was pressing the University to dispossess the fraternities that occupied houses on Locust Walk, the pedestrian Broadway of our large but compact campus. Their point was that having the all-male, mainly white fraternities occupy such privileged space in the heart of the campus was not only unfair to women and members of minority groups who were excluded, it also communicated an unfortunate message about the University. Fraternity partisans responded that it was not their fault that the University had grown over the last hundred years, so that their houses that once had been on busy city streets on the periphery of a disparate collection of academic buildings were now on bucolic Locust Walk in the heart of a consolidated campus, and it would be unfair as well as illegal to evict them.
Other issues were swirling around. I wanted to buy the huge, empty General Electric factory building on our border even though we had no immediate need for it. A new land-use master plan was pending before the trustees, having been thoroughly debated on campus. The trustees were divided on the merits of a proposed new student center and bookstore, given such a spectacular design by Kohn Pederson Fox that it seemed sure to become a signature building. A high profile faculty/administrator/trustee “process re-engineering” task force was roaming the University looking for cost savings. Lesbians and gays were campaigning for recognition of same-sex partnerships by the University so that partners would be covered by health insurance just as spouses were. The reaction to the Rodney King jury verdict had come close to igniting the campus earlier in the year, indicating that intergroup relations were still a bit raw. With all of these matters demanding attention, I was losing one of my most able and trusted colleagues, the executive vice president, who was leaving to join an investment management firm.
Such problems, part of a different story that I do not intend to tell here, are the ever-present companions of college presidents, hardly oppressive enough to make me want to leave. Besides, there were more reasons to feel good than to cause worry. Undergraduate students were proud to be at Penn, as was I. The undergraduate program was zooming up through the U.S. News and World Report rankings, suspect though they may be, and was on the verge of breaking into the top ten where it was destined to settle in. Wharton, Law, Education, and Medicine in particular were on steep upward trajectories. Nursing and the Annenberg School for Communications were arguably the best of their kind in the country. Only Stanford had as many professional schools ranked in the top ten as Penn. The fund-raising campaign that was due to end in June 1994 was roaring along successfully. We were already nearing the ambitious one billion dollar goal we had set, and I was quietly confident that we would exceed the then existing record of $1.3 billion, set by Stanford University, for five-year campaigns, not bad for a campaign that was planned during the stock market crash of 1987 and was conducted during a recession.[2] More important than the dollars raised, buildings built, and faculty hired, Penn had shaken off its version of the Philadelphia disease, the feeling that it is not really as good as the best. While no one was looking, Penn had begun to think of itself in a new way.
As the academic year 1992-93 started, I had reason to feel good about things. The problem lay elsewhere. It had to do with the rhythm of an institution’s life. I was approaching the end of my “work plan” for Penn. If I were to stay longer, I would need to reassess our strategic plan, produce an entirely new set of objectives for the next five years that would grow out of that reassessment, and be prepared to stay long enough to assure their success. If I did not want to make that major commitment of imagination, energy and time, I should go. The logical time for me to leave Penn would be the end of the campaign in June 1994, twenty-two months away. I had therefore already begun talking confidentially to the chairman of the trustees, Alvin Shoemaker, so we could together plan for a smooth transition.
For me, at the age of fifty-eight, this created a “what next?” problem. Flying back to Philadelphia in the middle of August from a wedding in Maine of the daughter of one of our close friends, I found myself thinking about the remarks that I would be making to freshman convocation Labor Day weekend. For twenty years, plane rides had provided a large share of the quiet time that I needed for reflection. Wedged into my seat (never in first class, of course; neither my own sense of self nor the democratic ethos of Penn would tolerate that), I was free of phone calls and meetings. This was rare unstructured time when I could read and think without feeling guilty about some pressing matter that was waiting to be tended to.
I thought that I might play upon one of my favorite themes at that convocation, one of the great paradoxes at the core of the human personality: our simultaneous desire to be valued as unique individuals and yet to be part of something bigger than we are individually. We want to be both the One and the Many. The traditional college years, eighteen to twenty-two, are typically the years when students are trying to determine who they are, to solve what Erik Erikson termed the “identity crisis.” Consequently, it is a time of self-absorption and introspection, of trying on different roles and experimenting with alternative values. Yet, it is also a time of painful cliqueishness and elaborate strategies to make sure that one belongs, and even that the belonging is evident in one’s appearance. As we explore our uniqueness, we are paradoxically seeking experiences of “solidarity” that reassure us that we are not alone. While we are looking inward, absorbed in the self-centered struggle to determine who we are as individuals, we are also looking outward, establishing close, trusting relationships with others. The friends we make during these years are frequently the best friends of our lives. This paradox is rich in meaning. In order to give of yourself, you need to know who you are, but you find out who you are in the act of giving yourself to others in friendship or in common enterprises. Both are true at the same time; we are both individuals and social animals. Particularly in American culture, the interplay between individualism and community is the site where each of us works out his identity.
I wanted to connect this phenomenon to public service. I had long been a booster of student volunteerism and service learning, and I was delighted that Penn had become a national model of student service. In a presidential election year, and at a time when cynics of the left and the right were attacking government as useless and inept, perhaps I could swim against the tide with a message about the duty and the rewards of public service. Thinking about how I was going to exhort the freshmen caused me to think about my own sense of duty, a strong residue of my Methodist upbringing.[3]
A couple of weeks later, back on Martha’s Vineyard for a final week of vacation before the hordes descended upon the campus, I played as much golf as possible. I know that it is not politically correct to play golf, linked as it is to racial, gender, and religious intolerance, but I am a shameless enthusiast who came to the game late in life, courtesy of a bum knee that made tennis no longer much fun. An even greater complication for any hope I might entertain of posing as the simple tribune of the people is the fact that, among my golfing buddies on the Vineyard, where I have been going in the summer with my family since 1966, is Vernon Jordan, the high-profile political and corporate insider.
I had known Vernon since 1982 when his daughter graduated from Penn and he was the Commencement speaker. Aside from that pleasant experience, we also shared several things: a delight in the Vineyard, a boyhood in the South, and a dedication to racial justice. It was natural that we would get along well. Being a friend of Vernon, of course, does not distinguish me from roughly half of the American population. His astonishingly wide acquaintanceship, and his excellent judgment, make him an extremely valuable advisor and board member. When he and I talked in August 1992, he was enjoying a last rest before being engulfed in the intense post-Labor-Day presidential campaign of another of his long-time friends, Bill Clinton.
As it happened, my wife, Lucy, and I were also, in a more modest way, supporting Clinton for president. Lucy is a lawyer who has devoted her career to juvenile law and advocacy on behalf of public policies affecting children. After
