Sol Gittleman, the Alice and Nathan Gantcher university professor who served as provost from 1981 to 2002, last night delivered a lecture taking an audience of students, faculty and alumni through a history of the Tufts presidency.
The lecture, entitled "Building a University — The Presidents of Tufts, 1852−2011," took place in Barnum Hall, as part of a week of events leading up to University President Anthony Monaco's inauguration on Friday as Tufts' 13th president.
The Experimental College sponsored the lecture, asking Gittleman to share his perspective on Tufts' journey. Gittleman has been a professor at Tufts for nearly 48 years, and authored "An Entrepreneurial University: The Transformation of Tufts, 1976−2002."
Gittleman opened by assuring listeners that they would make it home in time for the first pitch of the night's baseball game.
"I have to talk fast because it's the first game of the World Series," Gittleman told the Daily.
Tufts was established in 1852 with four professors and seven students on Walnut Hill, land donated by Charles Tufts. Founded as a nonsectarian university by Christian Universalists, its first four presidents — Hosea Ballou II, Alonzo Miner, Elmer Capen and Frederick Hamilton — were ministers.
Hamilton was the last clergy president at Tufts and was opposed to co−education, establishing Jackson College for women in 1910. The university's next six presidents included alumni, scholars and researchers who never looked toward the future, according to Gittleman.
"The board picked [presidents] who kept Tufts in the 19th century," he said.
It wasn't until the tenure of Tufts' 10th president, Jean Mayer, that the university took a step into the future, Gittleman said.
"He transformed the institution," he said. "He had a vision of driving the university forward with nutrition and making professional schools."
Mayer was a French nutritionist with a Ph.D. in physiology who had been rejected twice for the position of Tufts president, and was the Board of Trustees' third and last resort for the presidency.
In his lecture, Gittleman said that Mayer was someone who "nobody expected, nobody anticipated and nobody understood." He raised over $4 million for the university, was very independent, "invented the academic pork barrel" and was eventually pushed out of office by the Board of Trustees who were looking for more stability.
Gittleman believes that Mayer set the tone for the future presidents of Tufts, ending 120 years of stagnation.
"We'll never go back to where we were — this place has permanently been transformed." he said. "The presidents have a device — for Mayer there was no instrument, but now each of [the presidents] is capable of taking this instrument and doing more with it."
The 11th president, John DiBiaggio, continued Mayer's success over a slower−paced eight years, but it was his successor Lawrence Bacow, who ended his tenure earlier this year, who took the university on an elevator ride, according to Gittleman.
He further noted that over the past 35 years the university's rankings, especially the College of Arts and Sciences', have risen. Tufts has also attracted more students and distinguished faculty, as well as established a competitive endowment.
"The past three presidents did something no one had done before and that is raise money," Gittleman said.
He believes Monaco, a highly accredited neuroscientist and the first president with a medical degree, will carry on the success of the previous three presidents.
"Anthony Monaco is the first president who came here and instantly became the best scientist on the campus," Gittleman said.
The older community of alumni and faculty is excited to witness a new chapter in the Tufts presidency as they have more of a historical perspective compared to students who see the university through a narrow lens of four years, he noted.
"Students have seen a great president and what looks like another great president," Gittleman said. "Most of us who are older remember when this place was barely hanging on by its teeth."
The change in presidency is an exciting time for Tufts and an opportunity to look back through the school's history and its progression, he added.
"I think [the transition] should be reasonably seamless," Gittleman said. "Bacow and Monaco, with the exception of Carmichael and Wessel, are the two presidents who are intellectually and temperamentally the most alike."
