(46) John Dunlop, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences from July 1970 to February 1973, thought that the most significant element in Harvard’s transition from the 1960s to the 1970s was not the student takeover of University Hall, but the institutional changes unleashed by that event. Dunlop was ideally suited to take charge in the confusing post-bust period. Forceful, self-confident, canny, he became the czar of the interregnum. He sought to restore civil discourse by engaging the faculty in institutional reform. He chaired the University Committee on Governance that Pusey and the Corporation set up in September 1969. (47) From it came a flow of subcommittee reports: on Harvard and money, faculty and student rights and responsibilities, the presidential selection process, the nature and purposes of the University, and the organization and functions of the Governing Boards and the president’s office.
The committee found a Corporation and a president overwhelmed by day-to-day problems. (48) It proposed that there be vice presidents of finance, administration, development, and government and community affairs, and that a senior academic officer—a chancellor or provost—foster interfaculty programs and speak for the president on matters of educational policy. (49) The authors knew that "the damage of the reputation of the administrative function is so pervasive in the University that the sudden assertion of its importance.., may send shock waves through the community and cause particular concern among Deans. " But they believed that it was essential "to staff and perform properly the neglected service functions" of the University.
Derek Bok decided that to plunge at once into centralized administration was "too much. " He agreed on the need for a passel of new vice presidents, but was well aware of the powerful Harvard tradition of autonomous schools and faculties led by baronial deans (He had been one himself). While he had favored the appointment of a provost before he took office, now he had second thoughts. The major responsibility of most university provosts was budgetary: deciding how the financial pie should be sliced. That would reduce the authority of the deans. Even less attractive was the notion of having a provost to deal with educational and academic matters; Bok intended to do that himself.
At the same time he was a p believer in professional expertise. (50) This meant breaking away from Harvard’s tradition of administrators whose qualifications consisted in good part of having gone to the College and having close Harvard ties. Bok sought a different type of bureaucrat, of the sort prevalent at other large universities: professionals with outside experience.