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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Behind the scenes, the board of trustees watched the tone of the discussion turn sour. One trustee, Arthur Rasmussen Jr., from Walton, New York (master's in international relations '43), actively opposed Sonnenschein's plan to cut the core. An admirer of the Great Books curriculum that had defined the university for some 70 years, Rasmussen says he saw the university slipping into specialized academic fields and professors who were concerned more with their research than with teaching undergraduates. "Sonnenschein and the newer faculty had no sense of the culture," he says.
Sonnenschein had made it tougher on himself by giving the appearance to some faculty members of being rather highhanded. He had plugged his plan at a series of early-morning breakfasts with professors in the presidential manor at 5855 South University Avenue. The lobbying was regarded as a minor disaster. Sonnenschein did most of the talking, giving his guests plenty of time to enjoy the spread of fresh juice, croissants, and eggs, but little time to ask questions. "There was very little real engagement," says Wendy Doniger, a professor in the divinity school.
Two months after the Times article appeared, Chambers resigned his PR post. Asked recently if he had left by choice or been forced out, he responded, "Somewhere in the middle." Sonnenschein held on for three more months in the face of the widespread opposition. Then, the day before the trustees' spring 1999 meeting, he announced his intention to return to teaching economics. Today, he says there wasn't a single moment when he decided to leave. "I made the decision over time," he says. He left behind a university in need of a healer as much as a leader.* * *
Don Randel was serving as provost at Cornell when the search committee recommended him as the top choice to become the University of Chicago's 12th president. The day was December 9, 1999, and Randel celebrated by turning 59. The selection seemed like an ideal salve for a university tired of fighting. Randel arrived as an accomplished scholar in Renaissance and medieval music-"right up there in the big leagues when it comes to obscurity of scholarly specialty," he told the University of Chicago Magazine-and as the son of parents who had bought Mortimer Adler's Great Books series for the family dining room. Whereas Sonnenschein seemed stubborn and overbearing, Randel is effortless and unassuming. As a humanist and a musician from Edinburg, Texas, he is the alter-Hugo. "Sonnenschein came across as a man who was relatively insensitive," says Andrew Abbott, a sociology professor, "-someone who studies all the facts on his own, comes up with an answer, and then appoints faculty committees to come up with that same answer for him. I think Don Randel is a better listener. He has a better ear for hearing what people are upset about." Debra Pickett of the Chicago Sun-Times, after spending an afternoon with Randel, wrote, "He's working on the old boy's trick of never appearing to try very hard." But John Boyer, the dean of the College, says the new president "thinks very long and hard before he talks. He chooses his words very carefully."
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