Putting The School First

By WALTER SHAPIRO

Perhaps nothing in Donald Kennedy's distinguished career became him like the leaving of it. Last week the Stanford University president took a step that has become all too rare in modern American life: he resigned with grace and dignity under pressure. His departure, effective at the end of the coming academic year, is the outgrowth of the festering scandal in which the university has been accused of overbilling the Federal Government as much as $200 million for research expenses during the 1980s. But there was no smoking gun, no dramatic new revelation, no public ultimatum to prompt his surprise abdication after 11 years in office. Instead, as he explained at a valedictory press conference, "I'm the chief executive officer of the institution, and, as has been said, you bear responsibility when you have that job."

Responsibility has become a word almost un-American in its connotations. Japanese executives symbolically step down when the good name of their company becomes besmirched. But the American style is to gut it out stubbornly, blame overzealous subordinates or no one in particular ("Mistakes were made") and equate resignation with personal culpability. Kennedy, to be sure, had become the personification of the Stanford scandal; the university's aggressive billing techniques had included calculating as research overhead such expenditures as the cost of sheets, flowers and antiques for the presidential residence. No one had accused Kennedy of personal gain or even knowledge about the accounting practices. Against this background, there was something admirable about Kennedy's conceding in his letter to the trustees, "It is very difficult, I have concluded, for a person identified with a problem to be the spokesman for its solution."

Until recently, Kennedy's style had been stiff-necked in the extreme. So far, Stanford has offered to return $1.35 million to the government. Kennedy scoffed at resignation in interviews during Stanford's spring commencement. But six weeks of consultations and soul-searching convinced him of the folly of such a stubborn posture. As David Hamburg, a Stanford trustee and president of the Carnegie Corporation, put it, "He decided as a sort of symbol of the troubles, he'd better step aside, even though he loved the position and the university."

These days, perhaps only a masochist can fully enjoy the job of a university president. One of Kennedy's most far-reaching achievements -- broadening the content of the required Western Culture courses to be more inclusive of women and minority writers -- became a lightning rod for conservative attacks. Stanford faces a $95 million deficit in its two-year budget, even if the university avoids being forced to make a major repayment to the government. Kennedy plans to spend the next year focusing on this financial crunch. Faced with austerity, faculty members have their own grievances, and some even complain of Kennedy's emphasis on undergraduate education at the expense of research. William Spicer, a professor of electrical engineering, grumbles, "Don Kennedy has truly lost the confidence of the faculty, and that being - the case, everyone, including him, realized that it didn't make any sense to stay."

But that is precisely the point: Kennedy had the courage and vision to subordinate his ego for the good of the institution he nurtured. His high- minded leavetaking contains a lesson that should not be lost on Kennedy's counterparts in academia, business and government.

With reporting by Minal Hajratwala/New York and Robert Hollis/San Francisco