Bothering the President

Meanwhile the rest of us grumble — as a senior colleague of mine once memorably did, seeing the president turning the pages of a book in the U-Store: “Why is that man reading? He should be out on the road getting us money.” And then there are the outside critics who want to know why the president is not emulating his or her predecessors of a former golden age and climbing the bully pulpit to tell America … well, whatever they used to tell America. Endless, hair-graying work, constant fires to put out and a regular drumbeat of complaint from bystanders who think the president should just don a superhero suit and fix the problems immediately: Not a fun combination, any more than it was in the 1930s, when Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia would call my father, then a newspaper columnist, down to City Hall, throw him a big key ring and say, “Here! I’m leaving! You show how you can do it better.”

Like every colleague I’ve spoken with, I’m delighted to see Chris Eisgruber become the president of Princeton. He knows the problems and prospects of higher education as well as anyone in America. He pays extraordinarily close attention to the vast range of details, many of them seemingly trivial, which make a university work. He even supports so esoteric and old-fashioned a cause as the university library — an institution that is in decline at most institutions and vanishing entirely at some of them.

But as one of The Daily Princetonian’s designated faculty grumps, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t do my little bit to add to his troubles. So here goes. In an interview with Princeton Alumni Weekly and in other statements, the provost has made clear his concern for issues from enhancing diversity in the student body (kudos to him for mentioning the Graduate School in this connection) to measuring the impact of a Princeton education. But a couple of issues that he didn’t mention remain on my mind.

Princeton tries to be both a great college, devoted to a particular community, and a great university, devoted to scholarship, science and the world. It’s never been easy to meet both goals at the same time. Competing for position in the piranha pools of the academic world means fighting to hire and retain top talent (even during an academic depression, the best are in demand), and then encouraging those who are hired to push their research programs as fast and hard as they can. Building a local culture that emphasizes engagement with students at every level means emphasizing — and training faculty to emphasize — a rather different set of priorities. How well is Princeton managing to square this circle? And what plans do we have for doing so in the future, as our researchers in every field engage, even more intensively than in the past, with colleagues around the world as well as with students at home?

Princeton stands out from its sister institutions for its small scale and intimacy: Faculty and students here have traditionally had direct individual access, when they needed it, to members of the administration. This quality is as precious as it is distinctive. But Princeton also stands out for its extreme centralization. Professors play a major role in administration, in their departments and on university committees. University governance is another matter. The University faculty as a whole is too large to work effectively on most issues, and we lack the smaller faculty bodies, elected or appointive, which at some sister institutions meet regularly to consider, for example, such matters as the larger shape of curricula. The advantages of this system are obvious: Decisions can be made quickly, and no one has to listen to professors singing Groucho Marx’s great song from “Horse Feathers,” “Whatever it is, I’m against it.” But there are disadvantages as well — especially when it comes to mustering professorial energies to deal creatively with local problems. It would be reassuring to learn that Chris Eisgruber is thinking about new ways to work with the faculty, not just through ad hoc committees, but also in ways that could encourage participation and breed the enthusiasm that nothing else can produce.

As for reading books — well, I for one hope that our new president can still find time to do that, occasionally. As long as he doesn’t throw me the keys to Nassau Hall ...

Anthony Grafton is the Henry Putnam University Professor of History. He can be reached at grafton@princeton.edu.