The next day I went to see Gerhard and accepted the job. Terry Shepard, the university’s vice president for public affairs, and I met to discuss the rollout of the news. Terry echoed Gerhard’s view that the biggest challenge would be explaining my lack of experience in university administration. We decided to emphasize my corporate board service and what I’d done in the White House. “After all, you did manage U.S.-Soviet relations at the end of the Cold War,” he joked.
“Yes,” I said. “But Gorbachev didn’t have tenure.”
We put together an announcement that underscored the point—Terry’s, not mine—and went to press. I made clear that my first priority would be dealing with the university’s financial situation. “We cannot live beyond our means,” I said. “Unlike the federal government, I can’t print money.”
The news was received somewhat better than I expected. People were surprised, of course, but with the exception of some grousing by a few faculty members about my being a conservative, there wasn’t much negative reaction. I learned later that my name had been one of the six submitted to Gerhard by the committee, so there had been some process around my selection. I made a point of reaching out to a few senior people who’d most likely been the other candidates for the job—all of whom were generous in their offers of support. Later Gerhard told me that the reaction of Ewart Thomas, then dean of humanities and sciences, probably summed up most people’s thinking: “Gerhard,” Ewart had said, “you have balls.”
In fact, I no longer felt much trepidation about what was to come. I was pretty excited. A couple of days later I found myself driving through campus singing along with the theme from the TV series The Greatest American Hero: “Believe it or not, I’m walking on air / I never thought I could feel so free / Flying away on a wing and a prayer / Who could it be? / Believe it or not, it’s just me.”
I WAS supposed to begin the provost’s job at the start of the school year in September. The summer would be a time to get to know the issues better and put together a management structure. Jerry Lieberman, a gentle giant who was a highly regarded academic and university citizen, was suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. Nonetheless, he fully expected to be able to finish his interim term.
Jerry and I decided that the best way to proceed would be to have me shadow him each day, attending his meetings and observing what he did. This worked just fine, since I had no desire to get out ahead on the tough issues until the new school year. One day, though, as Jerry got up from his desk, his feet tangled and he fell with a heavy thud. He got up immediately and turned to me. “It’s the ALS,” he said. “It’s been a little worse lately.”
Then, a few days later, Jerry stood up in the middle of a presentation by the budget director, Tim Warner, and left the room silently. Gerhard came in the next day to say that Jerry could no longer go on and wouldn’t return to work. It was the beginning of July. We decided not to make a formal change—Jerry would remain as interim and I would go to his house two or three times a week to consult him. Universities are gentle in that way: there was no need to highlight Jerry’s sudden turn for the worse. But in fact, my apprenticeship was over. There had been no time to get ready. I would just have to do the job.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Tough Decisions
MY MOST important responsibility would be dealing with the university’s financial situation. Stanford had an operating budget deficit of about 5 percent. Though the budget at the time was over $1.2 billion, much of it was restricted to specific uses by the donors of the funds. The university therefore had to operate the physical plant, pay staff and faculty salaries and benefits, and cover the bulk of financial aid costs, among other expenses, on about $400 million a year. I had to cut $20 million of those costs. Moreover, the university needed money to rebuild the campus after the earthquake. The low-hanging fruit had already been picked in the previous round of budget cuts. The process had been elaborate with multiple faculty-student committees making recommendations on everything from student housing to university maintenance and academic programs. The idea had been to ensure buy-in from the entire Stanford community.
There was no way that this process would produce anything but distributive, Pentagon-style decisions of the kind that I had described to Gerhard. I had to be honest about how I would work. So in one of my first Faculty Senate meetings, I explained that we’d have to make significant cuts. “I don’t do committees,” I said. “I’ll consult widely. But someone will have to make decisions, and that will be Gerhard and me.”
There was a bit of a rumble through the room, but I don’t think the senators really believed me. It didn’t matter. I had made a promise to the trustees, particularly the finance committee led by a savvy businessman, Brad Freeman, that I would balance the budget, and I was determined to do it. I required all units of the university to propose 5 and 10 percent cuts in their budgets. That work was presented to a very small advisory committee, including the chief financial officer, my friend and colleague Mariann Byerwalter, the budget director, my closest advisor Tim Warner, Geoff Cox, director of institutional planning, and two faculty members whom I appointed. We met weekly.
Predictably, the pushback came from those who had felt privileged and untouchable for political reasons: groups in Student Affairs where my colleague, the Vice Provost Mary Edmonds, had proposed major cuts. The ethnic centers (Asian American, African American, Chicano, and Native American) were the most offended. The protests heated up, and they called a town-hall-style meeting and asked me to attend. I had a faculty dinner that night, which would make me a bit late, but Chip had gone ahead to assess the situation. As I walked from the Faculty Club toward Cubberley Hall, where the meeting was being held, Chip met me halfway. “There’s a huge and angry crowd,” he said.
“Okay. I thought there would be.” I took a deep breath and walked in.
The president of Stanford’s Black Student Union was serving as moderator. After a few strong words about how marginalized and victimized the ethnic students were feeling, he handed me the microphone. I resisted the temptation to say that I thought marginalization was a peculiar term for students who’d been given the chance at a Stanford education. Instead, I plowed into a presentation of the financial situation, saying that I’d asked the Physics Department for the same budget analysis. Everyone had to contribute.
During the question-and-answer session, a young blond woman who was apparently Native American yelled rhetorically, “The problem is, you just don’t care enough for the plight of minorities.” I waited while the audience erupted in cheers. Then, out of nowhere—not really having thought it through—I said, “You don’t have the standing to question my commitment to minorities. I’ve been black all of my life, and that is far longer than you are old.” The buzzing told me that I’d hit a nerve. The young woman sat down. I said a few words more and prepared to leave. But as I was turning away, the moderator decided that he would have the last word. I went back and took the microphone from him. “When you are the provost, you can have the last word,” I said. Then I left, feeling that I’d established necessary boundaries.
Those boundaries were tested again when I made the most controversial decision of my tenure as provost. I had to streamline the staff of Student Affairs and that meant laying off Cecilia Burciaga, the most senior Latina in the administration. I didn’t want to do it because Cecilia had served the university honorably. As the affirmative action officer on campus, she had been involved in my hiring. Nonetheless, I had few options, and I was determined not to cut faculty and the academic program.
The decision sparked a massive protest from the student body. The Chicano students set up a tent city on the quad in front of my office, and four young women started a hunger strike. They demanded that Cecilia be reinstated and that we start a Chicano studies program. I could tell that my decision to visit El Centro Chicano, the Hispanic cultural center, was not going to be viewed as the olive branch I intended. Instead, I sat there in fron
t of what looked like a shrine to Cecilia with the students accusing me of all manner of ill deeds.
As the protest dragged on through the week, the Faculty Senate met that Thursday. Several faculty members took the floor to bemoan the sacrifice the hunger strikers were making. “Don’t you feel bad that our children are sleeping on the quad and not eating?” one person asked. I was always struck by how students suddenly became “children” in these circumstances.
“I am sleeping and eating just fine,” I said. “They can stay out there until hell freezes over. My decisions stand.”
The next day Gerhard and I met with the students. Al Camarillo, a senior faculty member who’d been acting as the mediator, proposed that we form a committee to study the establishment of a Chicano studies program. Gerhard and I agreed and the crisis ended. Eventually this resulted in a popular major called Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity and a much more academically sound role for the Chicano studies center.
The end of the crisis was undoubtedly hastened too by an unusual April rainstorm that dampened the enthusiasm of the students for their tent city. One of the faculty spokesmen told the student newspaper that I’d treated the students as if I were negotiating with the Russians. I laughed out loud when I saw the statement. But it did cause me to think about my interaction with the students. As the year went on, I asked myself whether I was being too rough.
Throughout this period, the headlines about me were brutal and the criticism came almost daily. I talked to Daddy every day, and he brought the perspective of someone who’d been through tough decisions in a university environment. I know that the barrage of criticism directed mostly at me, some of it quite personal, bothered him. I assured Daddy that I wasn’t worried about the headlines, but it concerned him nonetheless. His reaction at that time has caused me to wonder how he would have dealt with my encounters with the rough-and-tumble environment of Washington during the George W. Bush administration. I am sure he would have gotten through it, but I could tell that Daddy hated to see his “little girl” demonized.
Nonetheless, Daddy helped me see the student protests in a different light. He believed it important for students to find their political voices while in the university. He reminded me that they were, after all, quite young. Shortly before graduation, the student who had moderated the town hall came to see me and asked how he could be more effective at leadership. I realized that Daddy was right. In the classroom, I was always careful not to put a student down for a comment, no matter how inappropriate. To do so is to freeze the rest of the students, who will fear humiliation. The power relationship is unequal, and students feel it. I decided that I’d try to remember that in my encounters with them as provost. In any case, I had established a pretty tough line. Maybe it was time to back off.
The budget situation took most of my time, but I had to attend to other matters as well. A few games into the football season, Bill Walsh, the legendary coach who had returned to Stanford after extraordinary successes in the NFL, asked to see me for dinner on the Sunday after a home game. He told my secretary that it couldn’t wait until Monday. Ted Leland, the athletic director, and I met Bill at the Lake House, a lovely home overlooking Lake Lagunita and the Stanford foothills that, as provost, I used for entertaining and meetings.
Bill was shaking. “I can’t go on,” he said. “I want to quit now and turn the program over to Terry Shea.” (Terry was the assistant head coach.) Bill had found the return to Stanford hard and ultimately unsatisfying. Initially, his team had been very successful, defeating highly ranked Notre Dame at South Bend in the first year. But now, in his third year, Stanford’s football fortunes had taken a turn for the worse. The talent was thin and the execution flawed. Bill was in no mood to do what it took to revive the program: spend days and weeks on the road trying to recruit eighteen-year-old studs with good grades to come to Stanford. He was tired.
Gerhard and I had decided that for operational affairs the Athletic Department would report through me. With Stanford’s chief academic officer in charge of sports, the right signals would be sent. It helped that I liked sports and enjoyed overseeing the department. Bill’s resignation would therefore be my problem.
I told Walsh that I didn’t need one of sports’ greatest legends quitting five games into the season. I implored him to stay on, saying we’d do a proper search as soon as the season was over. But Bill persisted in wanting me to appoint Terry as his successor. “I could even stay on for a few years as the assistant head coach,” he said.
I shook my head. “Bill, that won’t work. I have to do a nationwide search. There are all kinds of reasons, including the fact that I want a chance to look at black coaches.” I didn’t think much about the statement. It was well known that there are too few African American coaches in college football. I only meant that Stanford needed to pay attention to the issue.
In the end Walsh stayed until the end of the season. We then launched a search for Bill’s successor. Tyrone Willingham, who’d been an assistant at Stanford and was now with the Minnesota Vikings, emerged as a top candidate. But Tyrone had not been an offensive or defensive coordinator—the usual stepping-stone to a head coaching position. Even so, Ted Leland; Jerry Porras, the faculty representative to athletics; and I were all in agreement: Ty Willingham should be Stanford’s coach.
Gerhard was out of town. I called him to see if he’d be comfortable with the appointment. “We are going to be criticized for his inexperience,” I said. “But everyone says he was great when he was here, and we all believe he’ll be a fabulous recruiter.”
“Do it,” Gerhard said. Then he added with a chuckle, “I don’t worry too much about being criticized for appointing inexperienced people.”
The press conference announcing Ty’s appointment was set for the next day. I woke up that morning and went down to get the paper. Glenn Dickey of the San Francisco Chronicle had written that Stanford was about to hire an inexperienced coach because I’d insisted on bringing on a black coach. I was furious and called Glenn. “You didn’t say that the University of Colorado hired Rick Neuheisel [who also had not been a coordinator] because he was blond,” I told him.
I called Ty, who said that it wasn’t the first time he’d been underestimated. Willingham would go on to be one of Stanford’s most successful coaches, returning the Cardinal to the Rose Bowl in 2000 for the first time in twenty-eight years. Glenn Dickey later apologized, admitting that he’d been wrong about Willingham.
The truth is, issues of affirmative action are tricky in a university, whether in admissions, in faculty hiring and tenure, or in selecting a football coach. There is probably no single issue on which I’ve felt more misunderstood. For instance, I have been called an opponent of affirmative action and assumed to hold the same views as some prominent black conservatives.
In fact, I’m a supporter of affirmative action—if done in what I consider to be the right way. No one can doubt that years of racial prejudice produced underrepresentation of minorities and women in all aspects of American life. Corporate boardrooms, management suites, and elite university faculties and student bodies have for our entire history failed to reflect even roughly the ethnic mix of the country. That is not acceptable in America, which is the world’s greatest multiethnic democracy.
Yet the question of how to remedy that situation is a delicate one. I’ve always believed that there are plenty of qualified minorities for these roles—even some who are “twice as good.” But the processes of selection, the pools and networks through which people are identified, can very easily be insular and produce the same outcomes over and over. The answer lies in looking outside established networks and patterns of hiring. I consistently told the Stanford community quite openly that affirmative action had figured in my own case. Stanford traditionally found its faculty at peer institutions such as Harvard or Yale or perhaps the University of California—not at the University of Denver. But when, through the Ford Fellowship, I appeared on the radar screen, Sta
nford took a chance on me as an assistant professor. I always closed by saying that it had worked out just fine for me and for the university.
Unfortunately, very few minorities—particularly blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans—go to graduate school, the pool from which assistant professors are selected. (Law schools are an exception since they sometimes hire practicing attorneys.) Perhaps because many minorities are still first-generation college students, professional school is considered more practical. I had to make this somewhat unpopular point frequently to defend the relatively meager number of minorities we hired onto the faculty in any given year, though those numbers increased during my tenure. When pressed by minority students, I’d ask for a show of hands regarding how many were going on to graduate school. Few hands would go up. I’d then tell them that I couldn’t create assistant professors out of whole cloth, and they should consider going to graduate school. And we tried vigorously to recruit good minority students to our graduate programs. Very often, though, we found ourselves competing for the same few black or Latino students who’d been identified by our “peers”—Harvard, Yale, and so on.
It is also true that in student admissions it is necessary to take race into account. I don’t know why, but minorities continue to score lower on standardized tests such as the SAT, LSAT (for law school), or GRE (for graduate school). Even when adjusting for socioeconomic status, this disparity holds. But as my own story about the results of my PSAT in high school shows, these tests are not fully predictive of a student’s success or failure. Over the years, I have had students with perfect records at entry fail and students who were thought to have been marginal succeed. Yet the idea that minority students are getting a break at the expense of white students is one of the most toxic issues of our time.
Extraordinary, Ordinary People Page 26
