Publication Date: Wednesday Jan 6, 1999

At Stanford's helm

The Last of Your Springs, by Donald Kennedy; Stanford Historical Society; 225 pp.; $29.50

When Donald Kennedy told the Stanford board of trustees in July 1991 that he would step down as president at the end of the following academic year, he did so for the good of university. "It is very difficult, I have concluded, for a person identified with a problem to be the spokesman for its solution," he told the trustees.

Kennedy gives his take on the public black eye the university received during in the indirect-cost troubles in "The Last of Your Springs," a year-by-year memoir of his dozen years as Stanford's president. The book includes the highlights of each year, Kennedy's reflections on the events, and the texts of his speeches at commencements and other occasions.

There is some humor, too.

Kennedy prepared thoroughly to give one of the most important--and listened to--speeches of his presidency when then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev visited the campus, creating a media frenzy.

Kennedy had carefully written out his remarks, and he walked to the podium:

"I reached into my pocket, took out the text, and spread it out on the podium. When I looked down at it, what I saw was a guide to the pronunciation of the names of the visiting Soviet delegation. No sinking feeling I ever had compared with it."

Kennedy winged it, as it were.

But there was greater difficulty dealing with the indirect-cost troubles with the government. The scandal rocked the university and made national headlines.

In one of the most egregious cases, the university was found to be charging the upkeep of a donated yacht to its federal research grants. It was one of many accounting errors that embarrassed the university and cost it millions of dollars as its overhead research grant rate was slashed by one-fourth, and it had to spend further millions on new accountants.

The problem, as embarrassing as it was, was never as bad as some sensationalist newspaper stories--helped out by wildly exaggerated claims by a government auditor and congressional staffers--made it out to be.

But Kennedy had to go before a congressional committee, and he was raked over the coals. It wasn't pretty, and the image of the yacht lingered in the mind's eye, thanks in part to a news feature on ABC's "20/20" program.

Kennedy relates a visit from a congressional staff member before the controversy broke: "She asked about 'Stanford's yacht.' I said I didn't think we had one, whereupon she said one had been shown to her on a tour of Alameda. We joked about it for a minute; but she knew much more than she was saying, as we would soon find out."

Indeed. It was the yacht that more or less sank Kennedy's presidency after 12 years, a boat he didn't even know existed (it had been donated to the university as a gift).

Stanford wasn't blameless in all of this, however: Accounting errors were made. Furthermore, a number of distinguished Stanford scientists were growing more and more uneasy--before the scandal broke--that the university's indirect cost rate continued to rise in an attempt to pay the cost of new facilities.

For every dollar Stanford received in federal research grants, the university also received 73 cents in funding to cover indirect costs, such as the upkeep of libraries and other facilities. The 73 percent indirect cost rate was one of the highest of any research university in the country, which alarmed some faculty members, who thought it might make it more difficult for their grant applications to win approval.

That rate was slashed to 55 percent as a result of the extensive auditing of Stanford's research grants.

Noting that some of the public accusations against Stanford "were both wrong and unfair," Kennedy also admitted that the university had erred. "Not all the charges against Stanford were wrong, and we had some things to apologize for: some sloppy accounting, failure to examine the appropriateness of costs that were technically 'allowable,' and a certain reflex defensiveness in the early going."

There was more to the Kennedy presidency than accounting errors, of course. In fact, one of the benefits of "The Last of Your Springs" is understanding how much did happen at Stanford during those years, some of initiated, some unavoidable.

The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake severely damaged 26 buildings, which cost $160 million to repair. When the rebuilt museum reopens this month, the last of the Loma Prieta damage will have been repaired.

Kennedy also had to contend with his office being occupied by student protesters unhappy with the pace at which the university handled some ethnic issues; had to reply to public attacks from the U.S. secretary of education and the Wall Street Journal when the university revised its Western Culture course sequence; had to deal with faculty unhappy over the proposal to locate the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library at Stanford (ultimately, it wasn't); was occasionally nettled by verbal barbs from then-Hoover Institution Director W. Glenn Campbell; and had to respond to students who wanted the university to divest its stocks in companies that did business in South Africa. Those are just a few of the highlights.

He also had a university to run, a labor strike to deal with, an academic imbalance between the humanities and sciences, and a teaching initiative to launch.

Stanford had long before reached the first rank of research universities, but it was maybe a little more in the news than some of its peer institutions over the Kennedy years as he emerged as one of the most identifiable university presidents in the country. He also had to repeatedly beat down rumors that he would run for the U.S. Senate (the Stanford Daily's famous April Fool's editions helped keep Kennedy's candidacy alive).

And there is a tale or two to be told, in between.

One of the best involves what a new freshman student once told the then-dean of admissions about the quality of those admitted: "My roommate won the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, the woman across from me has published two short stories and a play, the freshman quarterback is three doors away, and down the hall is beautiful Wendy Wonka. Tell me, do you admit some of us just to be the audience?"

Under Kennedy's tenure as president, Stanford also celebrated its centennial, was continually one of the top-ranked universities in the country in the much-debated U.S. News & World Report annual college guide, had a record-breaking fund-raising campaign, and was visited by heads of state and the queen of England.

The Loma Prieta damage has been repaired and paid for, new initiatives have been successfully launched by Kennedy's successor, Gerhard Casper, to revise the undergraduate curriculum and privately fund graduate fellowships, and more students than ever want to enroll at Stanford.

But it's never a smooth ride, and there are always surprises along the way. Right up to the yacht, Kennedy weathered the rough seas and kept the helm pointed true. No mean feat, that.

The title of the book isn't as melodramatic as it may sound to readers who don't know the reference.

In 1982, during Kennedy's second commencement address, he closed with words spoken 30 years earlier at a Harvard commencement by Adlai Stevenson. The passage also closed all the Kennedy commencement speeches in the years that followed:

"Your days are short here; this is the last of your springs. And now in the serenity and quiet of this lovely place, touch the depths of truth, feel the hem of heaven. You will go away with old, good friends. And don't forget when you leave why you came."

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