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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In any case, the combination of Sonnenschein's agenda and Randel's personality has been, for the most part, warmly welcomed. "The battle with Hugo was so traumatic," says Robert Pippin, a philosophy professor and a member of the presidential search committee. "People felt, whether it was true or not, that they had a president who didn't appreciate them. They wanted a president who could show he loved them and their institution and who didn't come in to screw it up. They didn't want somebody with 50 new ideas. We went through all that."
Randel hung back and boosted morale. He lunched with the faculty and played jazz piano under the high ceilings of the Quadrangle Club. He sat on the stage at Symphony Center with the Chicago Symphony's music director, Daniel Barenboim, discussing Gustav Mahler's music and the price of orchestra tickets. He bought the books written by U. of C. professors and tapped them on the shoulder to say he enjoyed the read. "He talks about me, with me," gushes Doniger. "Hugo was very nice, but it was clear he hadn't read my work."
With Randel's careful encouragement, the mood in Hyde Park perked up dramatically. "There was a feeling of depression when I came on this campus," says Adam Kissel, a self-proclaimed campus revolutionary who, as a graduate student in the Committee on Social Thought, emerged as one of Sonnenschein's toughest foes. "Now there's a feeling of release. I've heard people say, ‘This is my university again.'"* * *
The University of Chicago president's office is a spacious rectangle on the fifth floor of the Administration Building, one of the few bordering the main quadrangle that are not accented with spires, battlements, and ribbed domes. With his salt-and-pepper hair and mild handshake, Randel does not cut an imposing figure. Rather, he carries himself with the unconscious formality of a man who believes real movies are in black and white and who says he can listen to the Beatles "up to a point." Randel has positioned himself as the quintessential outsider-a faculty member-thrust into an insider's role as an administrator. "The only reason I've gotten into these jobs is because if there have to be deans and provosts and presidents, I want them to have my values, which are essentially the values of a faculty member," he says. (Randel also reveals his faculty roots when he says that one of his responsibilities as president of the university is "to believe in those who are a part of it. Talented people need to be encouraged and supported in their work.")
Faculty values aside, Randel's aspirations for Chicago aren't much different from Sonnenschein's. While he has replaced all of Sonnenschein's lieutenants with his own, the growth of the College continues on schedule: 4,100 undergraduates matriculated in 2001-up from 3,631 in 1996, when Sonnenschein first announced his desire to expand the College. More than 4,150 are expected to enter this fall. The backbone of Chicago's proud general liberal arts education, the core curriculum, remains at 18 courses, Sonnenschein's reduced size (or 15, depending on incoming students' proficiency in languages). More rigid than the distribution requirements at most universities today, the core, founded in 1931 by Chauncey Boucher, then dean of the College, places an emphasis on the classical texts, like those of Aristotle and Thucydides.
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