Education: The Men in the Middle

RUNNING a university today is so burdensome a task that many campus presidencies go unfilled for months. The excruciating problem is to maintain order and academic freedom while still heeding legitimate demands for reform. How to be tough without playing into the hands of would-be martyrs, how to loosen the university structure without relinquishing necessary authority—these are dilemmas that require uncommon gifts of diplomacy, imagination and luck. Four moderate campus heads have done uncommonly well:

ROGER W. HEYNS, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY. Heyns, 51, came to Berkeley from the University of Michigan, where he had been a highly esteemed vice president for academic affairs, soon after the Free Speech Movement tumult of 1964-65. Holder of a doctorate in psychology, he combined the lessons of that discipline with the tactics of a skilled administrator, stressed communication and anticipation in dealing with crises.

Although he is an unflappable, pipe-smoking type, Heyns has a steely determination to keep his campus functioning, first proved this to students when he called police to quell disorders over military recruiting on campus in 1966. Only because he had demonstrated his interest in reform, won the trust of the students and repeatedly emphasized his desire to discuss the issues was he able to use police without exacerbating the conflicts. The chancellor takes abundant time from his jammed schedule to see students. Heyns' willingness to listen has kept him well up on student thinking.

His major test this year came when minority students picketed and disrupted the campus to reinforce their demands for a black-studies program. Heyns won faculty approval for an ethnic-studies department but rejected the demand for student autonomy. "I tried," he says, "to maintain open communications with the regents and the faculty and the students, to maintain an open position, to avoid getting in an adversary relationship with one group or another." Heyns' hope now is that the high pitch of student activism will decline as students see that violent disruptions keep the university from doing the things that they want done. If this happens, he will turn to the reforms that really concern him, such as student participation in governance, improvement of teaching, and development of small colleges.

MARTIN MEYERSON, STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT BUFFALO. Among the youngest of university presidents, Meyerson, 46, is a veteran of U.S. campus insurgency. As acting chancellor at Berkeley in the wake of the Free Speech Movement of 1964, he picked up the smoldering pieces with uncommon skill, winning the admiration of faculty and students.