In search for a president, new committee gets down to business

The committee that will search for a replacement for President Tilghman includes 11 alumni. Of the nine who are not members of Princeton’s faculty or staff, five work in finance and two work as health-care executives (Campus Notebook, Nov. 14). None of the University’s many accomplished alumni in literature, music, or media — to name a few fields — can be found on the list. If the composition of the committee reflects the University’s values, it suggests a lopsided and impoverished view of who and what matters to the Princeton community.

The Nov. 14 issue lists the members of the search committee for a new president of Princeton University. Of the 17 members, fully eight are corporate or financial (investment) executives, and one a law professor. A 10th member comes from the legion of University administrators, a deputy dean. There are four faculty members, one from engineering; two undergraduates (a nice touch); and a graduate-school ­student.

If our University were at heart a community of scholars and students, this committee would be a bizarre mismatch in the search for a new leader, who might be given the title of provost. If, by contrast, the University were a business — with students as products, the faculty as plant, and the business, legal, medical, and financial sectors as the market for those products — then this committee would be the right tool for placement of a president and CEO. The latter does seem to be the case. And considering also the precedent of the departing president as a highly compensated part of the nation’s interlocking corporate directorate, all the more appropriate.

Under presidents Goheen, Bowen, Shapiro, and Tilghman, Princeton University has enjoyed 55 years of outstanding and farsighted leadership of the very highest quality. (I am not old enough to remember President Harold W. Dodds *14, and for all I know this remarkable streak may be nearing 80 years.) I can think of no other contemporary institution, country, corporation, or other entity that could say the same. If there are any such, I’d like to learn of them. In the meantime, I’m confident that the presidential search committee will be up to the task.

Like many Princetonians, I regret but appreciate President Tilghman’s decision to relinquish her office. All of us owe her a debt of gratitude for her stellar leadership.

But a paradox in the Nov. 14 PAW struck me. I note that the search committee for President Tilghman’s successor includes only two persons with connections to the graduate school, one who is a faculty representative and the other the president of the graduate-student association. Not much of a voice at all, it would seem.

At the same time, news briefs in the issue trumpeted an upcoming conference to celebrate the Graduate College’s centennial and a literary event for graduate alumni at a dinner in New York City, hardly the center of the universe at least for those graduate alumni whose academic careers scatter them across the country. Of course, the University regularly solicits graduate alumni for donations, and in the last few years encouraged us to walk in the P-rade.

It appears that graduate alumni matter when the University wishes to showcase who we are and what we have done and seek our support, but otherwise would consign us to the back of the bus. I applaud Princeton’s commitment to undergraduate education, but sending such conflicting images of its graduate-school endeavors seems unfortunate indeed.

I appreciate your invitation to make suggestions to the search committee facing the formidable task of selecting a president to succeed Shirley Tilghman, who has provided extraordinarily versatile, able, and effective leadership. As a retired educator (chiefly an English teacher on the secondary level, but also an administrator, including head of school), I have several suggestions:

• Review the search process that led to President Tilghman’s appointment and identify procedures that can be profitably adopted by the current search committee.
• Acknowledge the impossibility of finding a candidate who offers fully developed expertise in all of the president’s areas of responsibility. Then identify areas that are well covered by members of the administration likely to remain at Princeton. Identify areas of responsibility that require strong presidential leadership, either because others in the administration cannot provide that leadership or because the board of trustees has identified the areas as critically important for development in the next five years.
• Questions for the candidate. If an inside candidate: What are the creative tensions that you are prepared to help Princeton maintain, how would you maintain them, and why are they important? If an outside candidate: What tensions have you experienced or observed in your present institution or organization that are or could be creative tensions that ought to be maintained? How have you managed and related to those tensions?

What sources of personal renewal will you cultivate while maintaining an excessively demanding schedule? (Not having a good answer should not rule a candidate out, but it should lead to assistance to help the candidate develop a good answer — and so serve Princeton well for an extended period, rather than burning out in a short time.)