Chronicle of Higher Education - web daily - February 17, 2000
Sen. Bob Kerrey to Assume Presidency of the New School University
By JULIANNE BASINGER
The New School University on Wednesday named U.S. Sen. Bob Kerrey as its new president, a move he said signaled a committed shift for him away from politics toward higher education as a career.
The Nebraska Democrat will begin his college presidency in January 2001, after his term as senator ends. Mr. Kerrey ran for president in 1992 and considered running for president this year. He had announced last month that he was retiring from the Senate.
While Mr. Kerrey won't sign a contract for the New School presidency until he leaves the Senate, he said that he had been negotiating a five-year agreement with the university's Board of Trustees. Political observers have mentioned him as a possible vice-presidential candidate, but Mr. Kerrey told The Chronicle on Wednesday that because he has allied himself with the Democratic candidate Bill Bradley, who is running second to Vice President Al Gore in the primaries, "the likelihood of getting a call to be a vice-presidential candidate is slim to none."
If it were to happen, Mr. Kerrey said he would require convincing. "I have made a commitment first to return to private life and second to do this job as president of New School," he said.
His longtime girlfriend, Sara Paley, is a former writer for Saturday Night Live and lives in New York. But Mr. Kerrey said that hadn't been a factor in his decision to take the New School job, "although it's a nice coincidence."
Members of New School's board said Wednesday that they were pleased and surprised that Mr. Kerrey had accepted their offer. "We never thought that Senator Kerrey would be interested," said Philip Scaturro, a trustee who has been sharing the duties of interim president at the university with two other administrators.
"But there was some sentiment amongst the board and the search committee that because we think of ourselves as a nontraditional university, that a nontraditional candidate might be a good idea," said Mr. Scaturro, who also is a Manhattan investment banker. "We were open to the idea of going beyond traditional academic choices."
The university had been looking for a new president since last year, when Jonathan Fanton announced he was resigning after 17 years as president to lead the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Mr. Kerrey said another New School trustee, Julian Studley, who is a New York real-estate executive, last year had asked him for names of unconventional candidates for the university's presidency. "I gave him names, and then after a while, I said, 'I'm becoming interested in the job myself,'" Mr. Kerrey said. "Then I had to step back and see whether that was a possibility, and see if I wanted to continue in the Senate."
His interest in education won out. "I have a passion and love for education," he said. "I think it's the most important thing going on today."
As a senator, he now chairs the new Congressional Commission on Web-Based Education, and he said that as New School's president, he would oversee the university's expansion of its Dial Cyberspace Campus.
Mr. Kerrey also plans to expand the university's role in primary and secondary education in New York. "I do intend to make New School University part of the problem-solving currently going on in primary and secondary education," he said. "I think that education is a seamless web."
The New School presidency is the senator's first foray into higher education as a career, although he once spent an academic quarter teaching a class at the University of California at Santa Barbara on the Vietnam War's effect on American society. Mr. Kerrey fought in that war as a Navy Seal and received the Congressional Medal of Honor.
The chairman of New School's board, John L. Tishman, said Mr. Kerrey's lack of a doctorate or a strong background in academe didn't worry the trustees. (Mr. Kerrey holds a bachelor's degree in pharmacy.) "The board chose him for his dedication to education," said Mr. Tishman. "Academic background was in the balance of things we considered, but the most important thing is what one does for education."