Tufts Acts to Follow

New England Journal of Higher Education, The, Winter 2005 by Cronin, Joseph M

Tufts Acts to Follow An Entrepreneurial University: The Transformation of Tufts 1976-2002; Sol Gitlleman; Tufts University Press/University Press of New England; 2004; $26

Although technically Volume III of Tufts University histories, Sol Gittleman's An Entrepreneurial University is really the amazing story of how Jean Mayer, Tufts president from 1976 to 1992, changed American higher education through his charisma, brilliance and opportunism.

The eyewitness author who served as provost under three Tufts presidents, including Mayer, tells the whole truth about how Tufts emerged from an underfunded teaching college to a billion-dollar university with three medical schools and a school of nutrition.

Other research universities, banded together in the Association of American Universities, recoil at many of the innovations pioneered by Tufts. Among them:

1. The hiring of lobbyist Gerald Cassidy to arrange congressional "earmarks" of federal dollars to launch nutrition research without any academic peer review.

2. The board's hiring of an executive vice president to contain Mayer's spending commitments and costly initiatives.

3. The cavalier treatment of deans and a former provost who end up resigning in protest after being ignored or bypassed on academic matters.

As a result of its aggressive fundraising with parents and government alike, Tufts won a citation as "Not Afraid to Break the Rules" in a Jossey Bass handbook on university capital campaigns. Traditionally, universities did not count government grants as gifts nor hire federal lobbyists to avoid competitive review of professorial research proposals. Since Mayer's early efforts, such congressional earmarks now reach $2 billion a year.

Mayer also raised state funds to establish a New England regional veterinary school after other universities either failed (Harvard 1887-1912) or opposed the idea.

Prior to Mayer, Tufts languished in the shadow of MIT and Harvard; many courses were taught by faculty who were expected to conduct research only in their spare time. Tufts was governed by trustees who preferred that presidents neither ask for big gifts nor build an endowment, despite financial shortfalls solved at times by selling parcels of land. Mayer, French freedom fighter and Harvard public health nutritionist, recruited trustees ready to support his visions of disease prevention and excellent faculty research.

Gittleman also describes the Tufts presidency of John DiBiaggio and his 1 Ith-hour choice as the "stealth" candidate for the post in 1992. Trustees hired DiBiaggio to remove the chronic budget deficits, cultivate the loyalty of students and alumni and consolidate many of the incredible gains won under Jean Mayer. The third Tufts president of the era, Lawrence Bacow, had only begun when Gittleman began his work, but won tremendous faculty acceptance for the brilliance of his leadership in economics, law and public policy at MIT where he was chancellor.

Gittleman deplores the new breed of professional CEOs who lead universities today, and who spend most of their time on budgets, buildings and fundraising. He respects the creation of the executive vice presidency, praising Frank Campanella of Boston College as well as Steven Manos of Tufts. He notes that Boston University was quick to hire Cassidy who has delivered tens of millions of dollars to BU's center on photonics and other projects.

The book suffers from Gittleman's compulsion to name each and every brilliant researcher and dean hired during his regime. And several points are made twice-that Dean Eliot's successor as ambassador to Afghanistan was assassinated, for example, and that John DiBiaggio never missed the NCAA Final Four. At the same time, the work of the Lincoln Filene Center, which DiBiaggio elevated to College of Citizenship status, deserves more discussion by the next Tufts biographer.

Gittleman himself is a delightful writer, beginning with his own tales of growing up as the son of a Hoboken bookmaker. He spares no adjectives in telling how Mayer was variously described as "infinitely charming, witty, duplicitous, ambitious, brilliant, opportunistic, generous, vain, slippery, loyal ..." and more. Tufts administrators and a hospital president are described as abrasive, arrogant, bul lies and tyrants. The first 130 years of Tufts may have been coated in sugar, but not this volume, not by an academic whose father worked in a candy store that sold no sweets, but took bets on high-risk ventures.

Other university leaders will borrow cautiously from the Tufts menu of academic transformation. Many academic statesmen and more than a few trustees oppose congressional earmarks as "academic pork." Few presidents want an executive vice-president or deans telling trustees about the expensive antics of their president. The Tufts experience may be almost unique and rarely replicable. But we are indebted to Gittleman for a great tale, told with great humility and verve.

Joseph M. Cronin is president, of Edvisors and former president of Bentley College.