Success 101
University of Chicago president Don Randel has won over a tough home crowd—all the while enacting most of his ousted predecessor's controversial agenda. His smooth transition demonstrates the art of persuasion, and it's good news for the school.
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But Sonnenschein's resignation is far from the end of the story. Two years ago, Don Randel, the former provost of Cornell University, stepped in as U. of C. president, and so far students and faculty give him high marks for job performance. And yet Randel, also with Princeton connections, has done little to turn back, or even slow, Sonnenschein's big changes. Randel's personal style may be more polished than his predecessor's, but his educational initiatives are nearly identical. Since Randel took over, "there's been no discernible change in policy . . . in terms of education or research mission or goals or priorities at all," says Geoffrey Stone, the school's former provost, who returned to teaching in the law school last year.
Meanwhile, as measured by applications, college rankings, SAT scores, and donations, the University of Chicago is on an upswing. Sonnenschein's prophecy that bigger could mean better appears to have been borne out, and the cheer from faculty leaders in the spring of 2000 was one of the first public acknowledgments that the policy-if not the man-was right. "It's a much better college than it was ten years ago," says Michael Jones, the associate dean of the College, which is composed of the university's undergraduates. "It's better for social life; it's better for academic life. There's a different energy on campus."
The recent turnaround at the University of Chicago makes a good case study on the powers of persuasion. Even in a place that prides itself on its intellectual rigor, a little sweet-talking and coddling seem to have made all the difference in the world.* * *
The acrimony of the Sonnenschein era accelerated on the morning of December 28, 1998, with a cold delivery boy tossing blue plastic bags onto Hyde Park doorsteps. Inside, The New York Times carried a front-page story by Ethan Bronner with an unsettling headline: "Winds of Aca-demic Change Rustle the University of Chicago." Al Chambers, head of the university's public relations office, had cultivated the story at a meeting in the Manhattan offices of the Times, talking up the school's new effort to recruit better rounded students (read: fewer eggheads) and to enhance their opportunities to escape the library. In the Times story, Bronner acknowledged Sonnenschein's undertaking, but the article was tough, giving plenty of space to Sonnenschein's detractors and candidly describing the school's problems as a "painful identity crisis" that had come about through Chicago's "high-mindedness.'' Bronner quoted Behnke as saying, "I don't know how many students we can attract if we go after those who only seek the life of the mind." ("I took some grief," Behnke says today. "[Sonnenschein] wasn't too thrilled about that quote.")
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