On the issue of recruiting senior administrators from within or outside the University ("Turnover at the top" Sept. 8), over the last 80 years the record in the matter of presidential appointments confirms that Brown has overwhelmingly favored external appointments. During this period there has been only one president, Barnaby Keeney, who at the time of his appointment was already a member of the Brown faculty. The last Brown president who was also an alum was Clarence Barbour '88. He died in office in 1937.
However, the record regarding this same issue among other offices of the Brown senior administration, especially on the academic side, has been far more mixed, especially since about 1990. An exception is the dean of the Graduate School, where there has never been an appointment made from outside.
There are clearly important costs as well as benefits to either external or internal recruitment, as your article rightly shows. But there is one additional downside to Brown recruiting its academic leaders largely from outside the Brown faculty which you miss. That is the disincentive such a pattern would have for middle-career faculty who are considering spending their energy and time preparing themselves, in part, for possible high-level management responsibilities later on.
Ordinarily, such preparation includes faculty committee work, directing centers and institutes and serving as the chairs of academic departments - in short, the "stuff" of faculty self-governance, all of it time-consuming and, some feel, distracting from serious academic work. Such administrative chores will continue to be performed in any event, of course, but if externally recruited presidents appear to favor drawing their provosts, vice presidents, and senior deans from outside, not only will the quality of the senior administration be impacted upon,
(admittedly at times favorably), but the enthusiasm of the faculty generally for challenges of faculty self-governance will, in my opinion, be undermined. The responsibility for guiding Brown will increasingly be seen as the domain of "the administration," not of the faculty.
I am pleased therefore to suppose that recent appointments of long-time Brown faculty members to a number of our high-level management positions will now encourage the next generation of Brown faculty members to begin to prepare for the day when they too may be asked to assume similar responsibilities. Baseball teams are not the only organizations that profit from having good farm systems.
Newell StultzProfessor Emeritus of Political Science Sept. 8
