Q&A: Eisgruber '83, University President-elect

Following the University press conference naming Provost Christopher Eisgruber '83 as the next University president, Eisgruber sat down with The Daily Princetonian to discuss his selection, his plans for the University and his time as an undergraduate. Eisgruber said he supports the grade deflation policy and the freshman rush ban, hopes to continue the University's efforts at refining multiclub-bicker and the residential college system, online courses and international programs and looks forward to no longer having to explain what a provost does.

The Daily Princetonian: You mentioned that you had only heard 10 minutes before the press conference that you were going to be the 20th president.

President-elect Christopher Eisgruber: That I was officially selected, James. The Board has to vote. Until they vote, I’m not it.

DP: What went through your mind at that moment?

CE: Well, at that moment, since I was expecting it, it was sort of, "Wow, this is wonderful; I have to go ahead and make sure I can deliver my remarks coherently."

DP: And when did you first learn?

CE: So that was a little more than a week ago, when Katie Hall phoned me. So at that point I knew I was a finalist. I have to say, you know, I hadn’t heard from her for a bit. As with any process that you’re going through where you’ve been interviewed and you haven’t heard, you get a bit worried, and so I was exhilarated when I got the call.

DP: And when did you tell your family?

CE: Well, I told my wife immediately. So I actually I got off the phone with Katie, and I phoned Lori. With [my son] Danny I was a little more careful about it just because I didn’t want to put him in the position of having to keep a secret which was very well-guarded. You know, he could get uncomfortable questions at the high school. So what I told him immediately was that I was a finalist and that I was under serious consideration, and did he have any questions that he wanted to ask me about that. I finally told Danny Friday night.

DP: And how’d he take it?

CE: He smiled at me; he said that was fine. He asked me if he had to wear a tie or not, and whether he could wear his orange socks.

DP: When did you accept the nomination?

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CE: I accepted the nomination the moment it was offered to me. I have been very enthusiastic about taking this position, and as I said at the press conference, you know there was a decision that I had to make and that every administrator at this university had to make: whether or not to leave behind their research, in particular. I do hope that I’ll be able to teach occasionally as president, as Shirley Tilghman has done, but you make a decision to leave behind your scholarship, and particularly in a job that’s as all-consuming as the president’s job, there’s not much choice about that. So that’s a serious choice. But once I had made that decision, I was sure I wanted to move forward.

DP: How does a constitutional law expert like yourself become provost and then president of a University without a law school?

CE: So, I’ll tell you one thing about that. You know, when I was moving here from NYU — and NYU, I had a wonderful career there, [and] a lot of my colleagues there are still very good friends and some of them were trying to keep me from coming here — the philosopher Tom Nagle had a conversation with me where he made one of the worst predictions that I’d ever heard. One of the things Tom said to me at the time was, "Chris, you should stay at NYU because if you go to school without a law school, you’ll be a lot less central to what goes on at the university unless it’s in the administration." And I have to tell you, I replied to him, “Look, that’s fine with me; I’ve been doing administrative things; I’ve chaired the appointments committee here; I want to spend all my time on teaching and research." So I’m going to Princeton and I understand that’s a cost, but it’s something that I had anticipated when I came here.

As I’ve said to people before, when Amy Gutmann left the provost office, I really did not consider myself in any sense a candidate at that point. I got a telephone call from Shirley Tilghman’s office to come in and meet with the president and give her advice. And I had been doing my best to do what I told Tom Nagle I would do — and that was staying in teaching and research. And the reason I have stayed in the role and enjoyed it is because of my commitment to this university and how much it means to me. There are some people who want to go into university administration, and some of those people leave and go to universities they don’t know in order to that. I can’t imagine doing that. The reason to do this job is as a way of serving an institution that has made a transformative difference in my own life.

DP: And what has the last week been like for you? What were you doing out in St. Louis?

CE: I was out in St. Louis giving a talk on religious freedom, which you can find on the web, I think, at the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics. It’s a center with a Princeton connection both because John C. Danforth '58 gave the gift to establish the center and because it's led by Marie Griffith and Leigh Schmidt, two terrific faculty members who used to be here. But I went out there to give an academic paper, probably the last time I’ll do that for a while. It was nice to be out there, and in some ways, it made it a little easier, to be away from campus. I didn’t have to dodge questions as much as I would otherwise have to be doing.

DP: So you’ve been provost since 2004. And from the outside it seems that the Office of the Provost is mainly concerned with things like financial matters or administrative matters. How do you plan to transition into a role where you’ll be seen as the authority, as the figurehead of all kinds of facets of University life? Of student life, things like that?

CE: You know, the provost has to do with a very wide variety of matters. One of the groups that I chair around this table is the Academic Planning Group, which does approve all curricular initiatives and new academic programs. But one of the reasons you have a provost is to keep the president out of committee meetings so that the president can be out in the community in the hustings. And I look forward to that. I’ve had some opportunity to do that while I’m provost, and I’ve enjoyed it, but for me it’s an attraction.

DP: In an interview we did with President Tilghman in November, she mentioned that one of the things she felt was unfinished from her presidency was the revival or revamping of the residential college system. Have you given any thought to your plans for the residential colleges moving forward?

CE: First of all, I have to say that almost anything on the Princeton campus is always unfinished. And that’s a little bit of what I said about the reinterpretation and renewal of traditions. I think one of the fabulous things about this campus is that we’re always asking how we can do better what we’ve been doing for a long time.

On the other hand, I feel that we’ve come a long way in terms of the options that we now have and the ways in which we’ve created inclusivity and support throughout the four years of the Princeton experience. The difference between where the residential colleges were when Shirley Tilghman took office and where they are now is remarkable. And obviously the same can be said about Harold Shapiro’s tenure, which really put them in process.

That said, for me one of the things I have found of an opportunity in this regard is that we’ve always hoped — and I think students have hoped — that these residential colleges will become sites of community in the same way that, for example, the eating clubs are. I remember one particular CPUC meeting a few years ago where there was a panel talking about intellectual life at Princeton outside of the classroom, discussions about conversations that took place over dinner in the eating clubs, in the Behrman Undergraduate Society of Fellows, in various other places. But there’s a sense that even though there were lots of things that were organized in the residential colleges, maybe students didn’t feel the same ownership of those things that they sometimes do in other venues.

I find this sometimes. You know, if the [college] master invites me to come to a group, I sometimes feel that there’s a group of people here that the master may have dragged in by the sleeves before they came in the room. But if I get an invitation from a student, then the room is full of other students. And I think one of the things we need to do is promote that kind of ownership of the student life within the residential colleges and that same kind of activity, and I think we’re moving in the right direction. Dean [of the College] Valerie Smith has paid a lot of attention to this, and she’s moving things in the right direction.

DP: One new development with the eating clubs has been multi-club Bicker. It seems that the administration has lent their support to the idea, but what is your stance on multi-club Bicker?

CE: I certainly support that. I think the wonderful thing about Princeton now is that there are choices and different people find their places, and in my own experience as an undergraduate at Princeton — I was a member of Elm Club during my junior of year, which, of course, no longer exists. The building is now the Fields Center, but it was an important source of friendships for me. Then my senior year I was independent, with three roommates whom I’d met at Elm, in Spelman [Halls]. So I recognize in my own experience here that different students look for different options, and I think one of the things that is important now is that there are these different options and they’re meaningful options.

DP: What about the option of Greek life? President Tilghman, of course, implemented the ban on freshman rush this year. What are your thoughts on that?

CE: Well, I was a strong supporter of the policy that she and the trustees adopted in that regard, and for the reasons that were set out in connection with that policy. The data we had both suggested a significant degree of risk to freshmen from some of the activities associated with at least some of the fraternities, and a kind of degree of social separation more significant than what we’re looking for in the campus, especially during the freshman year, as a chance for students to mix and integrate. So I do fully support the policy that’s in place.

DP: You mentioned that you’ve been involved with academic policy during your time as provost. What do you think about grade deflation?

CE: I call it the grading fairness policy. I think we are in a good place on that policy. And again, I think Val[erie] Smith has been working to shape it around the edges in appropriate ways. The motivation, and the reason I think of it as a grading fairness policy is that, first of all, it has not changed the cumulative grade point average at Princeton, except for about two basis points, so, say, the different between a 3.67 and a 3.65. And secondly, the policy was motivated when faculty committees were looking at the grades in different departments, and finding that, in some sense, how students were doing and whether you got a B+ or an A- depended not on the work you were submitting but rather on different standards that were being applied in different departments. And it’s hard to defend that kind of arbitrariness.

So I think it’s very important that we look at this and make sure that the policy is well-understood — there have been misunderstandings around it. We need to make sure that we’re sensitive to the concerns that students and faculty members have about it. But I think that kind of fairness is very important in what it is that we do.

DP: During her remarks today, President Tilghman mentioned — and praised — the way in which you steered the University through the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009. Looking forward, how would you asses the University’s fiscal health in 2013?

CE: The good news it that the University’s fiscal health is quite strong right now. We have successfully come out of that financial downturn and re-baselined the budget. Our units have, with very rare exceptions, stayed with their new budgets, which they need to be able to do. We’re now in a position where we are again looking forward and saying, OK, how do we grow from where we are right now?

I think the real question that we have to ask is not so much about the financial crisis, which at this point is fortunately in the rearview mirror, but about what lies ahead and how that compares to the past. So there was a period when if you looked at about 25 to 30 years in endowment returns, we were averaging about 15.5 percent per year. Now most economists believe that that was the consequence of one of the great bull markets in financial history, and maybe we see that again. But the prudent prediction would be that we are not going to see that return.

We believe that we can obtain the kinds of returns — and that Andy Golden and his outstanding team at PRINCO can obtain — the kind of 10 percent annualized returns that we’ve seen over the past decade, even including the financial crisis, and that allow us to sustain what we’re doing. But for a long time, that kind of above-expectations growth was something that affected us and everybody else in higher education. So if you look at that period, you see universities expanding rapidly, in ways that, particularly in our portion of the sector, were driven by their endowments. And I do think we’re going to have to think more creatively and strategically about how we grow under circumstances where we should be very happy if we once again see those kinds of returns, but where we can’t make the mistake of thinking that we’re entitled to them.

DP: Under President Tilghman's administration, we saw the phenomenal success of Aspire. It is, of course, too early to think about something similar under your tenure, but do you anticipate anything of that scale going forward?

CE: Universities raise money so that they can basically sustain their hearts, I would say, and extend their reach, and I would expect that over the course of my presidency we will have a fundraising campaign, but you’re absolutely right, it’s too early right now. At this point we are celebrating the success of the Aspire campaign and thanking our alumni for their loyalty, so fortunately this is a time for all of us to breathe. You know, there are a number of initiatives right now that this university is pursuing very aggressively, including the arts neighborhood, the internationalization, and we will continue to seek funding for those.

DP: I want to go back to 1979 when you entered the University. How would you describe your four years here?

CE: My four years here were transformative, happy. They were years that stretched me, that gave me friendships that have lasted a lifetime since then that forced me to rethink the ideals that I brought to the University and enabled me to come away with understandings of ideas and of people and of places that I didn’t have before I came. So it is, I can’t think — you know, the psychologists all tell us it’s the first four years that are the most important, but we can’t remember those, so of the years that I remember, these were certainly years that defined me as a person, and they were also very happy years.

DP: How has the University changed since 1983?

CE: As I said in my remarks, we have become more inclusive in ways that are very important. That is striking to me, and there are aspects of that that I appreciate even more from year to year. I just had a capacity to reconnect with one of my senior-year roommates who was back here for the Every Voice conference that we just had over this weekend, and I was talking to a number of alumni who were back for that conference about what their experiences were like during the time that they were here. That for me is a vivid reminder of how much Princeton has changed with regard to questions about inclusivity.

On the other hand, I’ll also tell you that there are places on this campus that didn’t exist when I was here at all, and then I’ll think, "Well, what was this when I was here?" But then there are times when I can walk someplace and I can see a group of students in blue jeans and T-shirts and I’ll have this kind of Proustian moment, and it will feel just like it was when I was on campus. So again, it’s the striking thing about Princeton that we are preserving so much of this character that distinguishes us as a University but also reinventing it as we go along.

DP: Did you have any frustrations with the University during your time here?

CE: I must have had frustrations at the University when I was here. It’s hard for me to recall exactly what those were — at this point, you know, this might be one of the tricks that memory plays on us in retrospect because it’s also a time when, as you know, we’re all growing as people. But I was very grateful for the education that I was getting.

DP: Will you plan to continue your role on the advisory council of Coursera during your presidency?

CE: I will have to rotate off that, I think. Most of the people who are on it are actually provosts. There are one or two chancellors or presidents, but I think it would be good for whoever my successor is as provost to represent the University in that capacity. As you were saying earlier, there are different roles for different offices here.

DP: How do you see Princeton’s role in the maturing field of online education?

CE: I think that is one of those questions we really have to think collectively about as a University. What I’ve been very glad about with regard to Coursera is it means, so to speak, we’ve jumped into the pool and we’re learning how to swim. We have a set of faculty members who instead of saying, "You know, this is very foreign to what we do here at Princeton," are instead saying, "I’ve been doing this, and it’s helping my teaching in my own classroom here on the Princeton campus, and it’s also a blast to reach students as far away as Kathmandu." So I think that’s been important.

I think we have to think hard about where we are in this space. Right now, although we’ve been very active with Coursera, there are other respects in which we are the most conservative university in the country with regard to these things. So I’m not sure if there’s any other university that offers no online course for credit and no kind of online certificate program, and we have taken that position very deliberately, but I think we do need to ask ourselves, "All right, given how fast things are changing, and given our mission to make a difference in the world, is this the best place for us to be?"

DP: What are you most excited about?

CE: In addition to no longer having to explain at the beginning of all my speeches exactly what it is a provost is or does, I really say it goes back to a difference you pointed out earlier in the conversation, which is: This is an opportunity for me to spend time really out there, both speaking on behalf of the University and listening on behalf of the University, spending more time with students than I have been able to do, spending more time with alumni than I’ve been able to do and dealing in a different capacity with faculty and staff. I enjoy that and look forward to it.

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