Bill Bowen (1933-2016)
William G. Bowen, the former
president of Princeton University, died last week. Bill was already a professor in the Economics
Department when I arrived on the faculty in 1965. Two years later he became provost—technically
the second person to hold that new office, though effectually its creator—before
being elevated to the presidency in 1972.
He was the seventeenth president of our venerable institution, and
served until 1987. This meant that I was
an observer of his entire administrative career here. I was never a member of the Administration,
but I served on various consequential committees and chaired an important
academic department during that time, so that I have a reasonably informed
basis for my high opinion of the man and his work.
Large and noble educational
institutions respectful of long tradition and governed by the fiduciary
principle generally move like battleships in port—which is to say, slowly and
carefully. But move they do. There is no
standing still. They are getting either better
or worse. And they move in large part
animated by a vaguely defined “leadership”.
My father was of the cynical opinion that the divine protection of the
Church was proved by the mere fact of its continuing existence through
centuries of malfeasant leadership. But
if you happen to be a part of some large earthly enterprise whose mission you
applaud, even but a small cog in the machine of human betterment and
fulfillment, it is inspiring, encouraging, and beneficially challenging to know
that the people at the top, including particularly the person at the very top,
are of outstanding character and capacity.
I believe that a large part of our
persistent national malaise, an acute phase of which has flared up during the
current election campaign, arises from the want of access to such credible
belief. So I have a nearly sacred
obligation to acknowledge the great good fortune of having spent a professional
career under the leadership of four presidents very different in their
accidental qualities but very alike in their essential excellence.
The death of a man of Bowen’s
eminence and achievements naturally attracts obituary attention commensurate
with its subject. I have seen several
impressive notices already, and more will appear. This brief appreciation is not of that
sort. I am not a theoretician of
American higher education, and I do not feel qualified to comment on a career
that many knowledgeable people would say became more rather than less important
after Bill left Princeton and went to the Mellon Foundation. But I have never seen anyone put more into a
job than Bowen put into his. The man was
an indefatigable worker to judge by my accidental observation. As an early-morning swimmer I habitually
passed by the back side of Nassau Hall on the way to the pool in the pre-dawn
dark. I always knew when the President
was out of town: the lights were not blazing in his offices. On several occasions I travelled with the
President and others to alumni conclaves hither and yon. I noted that he spent practically every
minute of the return flights writing longhand against a clip-board:
hand-written notes thanking hosts or otherwise following up on particular
matters from the meeting or event.
I once drew him up short by telling
him that he had an “abbatial” style—that is, the style of a Benedictine
abbot. Religion was not a big thing with
Bill, and I doubt that he had much pondered the medieval monk as his role
model. But the analogy remains in my
opinion just. He prided himself on
knowing the name of every faculty member—no mean feat. And though his first and apparently ruthless
concern was always with “quality” and “absolute distinction” in his faculty, I
came to hear over the years of several instances in which he made discreet,
helpful interventions in relief of drastic faculty health or family
emergencies—and that was only in the small plot of the institution in which I
myself toiled. He was expert, too, at
letting other people have his own way.
As Lyndon Johnson was to the U.S. Senate, Bill Bowen was to the Board of
Trustees.
He was not an easy man to get one
past, but I did it one time, when he was still Provost. To understand and forgive the anecdote you
must realize that even I was once young and even Princeton had its mildly wild
side around the cultural revolution of the late Sixties. My very dear friend Jim Magnuson was then a
playwright in residence as Hodder Fellow.
Jim had among his trove of stage properties a tent-size crimson gown
fashioned in a light corduroy material that had been prepared for a production
of The Duchess of Malfi—doubtless for
the duchess herself. It was decided that
human felicity would be increased if I were to march in the Commencement
procession wearing this garment. I did
so. The truth of the matter concerning
academic ceremonies is that you can do almost anything so long as you do it
with pomp and apparent authority. Beside,
one fake Renaissance garment is pretty much like another. A moment of inadvertent but felicitous
eavesdropping at the end of the ceremony picked up the following.
Bob Goheen: What was that robe John Fleming was wearing?
Bill Bowen: Oh, Bob, that’s an old
Oxford gown—said with apparent authority.
