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SADNESS AND GRATITUDE were the predominant sentiments felt by most African-American administrators and faculty members upon learning of Neil Rudenstine's plans to step down from the presidency of Harvard University in the spring of 2001. They understood that they were losing a person who had demonstrated in word and deed a deep-seated commitment to elevating the status of blacks in higher education generally and at Harvard in particular.
For years blacks had complained that they felt like outsiders in what should have been their institutional home. Neil Rudenstine's administration went far towards assuaging that feeling of alienation. He personally met periodically with a group -- the Harvard Association of Black Faculty and Administrators -- that primarily voices the concerns of midlevel black administrators, an important cadre of workers whose presence at many colleges and universities is often neglected. Rudenstine strongly supported the African-American studies department, extending to that department's famous chairman, Henry Louis Gates Jr., the resources needed to attract established academic stars such as William Julius Wilson, Cornel West, and Lawrence Bobo.
Neil Rudenstine undoubtedly signed off on...