Universities: The Man Who Cooled M.I.T.

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"A president should be active, visible and accountable," says Johnson, who agrees with Yale's Kingman Brewster that the performance of university presidents should be reviewed periodically —and ended if need be. Johnson arrives at his huge square desk by 8 a.m. and seldom returns home before midnight. He spends his evenings with students and faculty to keep up with their ideas, an activity he finds not unpleasant but timeconsuming. "Those who want to see me come to the office," he says, "but I have to go out and find the people I want to see."

Johnson has a quick sense of humor and is the first to chuckle at his campus nickname "Ho Jo," after the restaurant chain with 28 flavors of ice cream. Deep down, he is also pugnacious. During the demonstrations, he avoided his office, fearing that if the militants came to seize it, he would personally put up a tussle.

Reorienting Priorities. In calmer times, Johnson has been trying to redefine M.I.T.'s role in a fast-changing technological society. One of his main goals is to expand the social consciousness of future scientists and engineers. He has tried to make the curriculum as flexible as possible, with special emphasis on the humanities.

The proper role for research at M.I.T. is still Johnson's biggest problem. "The first task of this institute is education and research," he says, "and I don't differentiate between the two. The classroom and the laboratories are connected in a dynamic way." Though Johnson thinks that M.I.T., like the nation, is expending too many resources on defense work, he does not oppose all military research. Indeed, he considers it an essential deterrent to war. "This institute must constantly try to relate technology to man's purposes," he says. "And that means basic research for defense as well as a larger concern for other human needs."

Johnson concedes that reorienting M.I.T.'s research priorities away from the military and toward the civilian may prove as difficult as reorienting the nation's. Funds for social projects are not exactly pouring out of the Nixon Administration. Even so, Johnson is optimistic. "The big money isn't there now, but the interest is," he says, "and the money will be there when we need it." Realistically, thinks Johnson, the process of redirecting priorities will take three to five years.