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From the Editor
March/April 2004
by Kathrin Day Lassila ’81

The talk on campus these days is about executives. The president of the United States just appointed the president of Yale to a panel on intelligence (p. 22), and the former CEO of Procter & Gamble has become Yale’s vice president for finance and administration (p. 18). But most of the talk is about the executive with the old-fashioned title of Dean of Yale College, and its mood is elegiac.

Dean Richard Brodhead is leaving Yale at the end of June to become president of Duke. When he leaves, there will be official farewells and tributes. But the most impressive tribute is this medley of unscripted testimonials, which would lead an anthropologist to conclude there isn’t any backbiting or jealousy in academics after all. When Brodhead’s back is turned, people earnestly say that he’s wonderful.

Dick Brodhead has been at Yale almost 40 years, ever since he was a bursary boy (as they called work-study students then) doing the copying in the English department. He graduated in 1968, produced extraordinary scholarship on nineteenth-century American literature, was granted tenure young, became department chair young, and became dean young. He was appointed in 1993 by Howard Lamar, then acting president. Acting presidents usually refrain from making major appointments. But, said Lamar, the clear exception to that rule was Dick Brodhead, because whoever became president could not conceivably object.

They say Brodhead is a dynamic administrator who can accomplish things just walking down the street. “Two or three people will come up to him, they talk, and they leave with two problems solved and one new idea,” says Fred Strebeigh, a lecturer in English. “Everywhere he goes, all over town, things get done.”

They say he’s dedicated to students. Cornelia Pearsall, associate master of Berkeley College, was a TA for him 15 years ago. “He seemed as inspired by students as they were by him,” she says, “which strikes me as a kind of pedagogical ideal.” Penelope Laurans, lecturer in English and an associate dean of the college, says, “Go to a theatrical event, or a women’s lacrosse game, and Dick will be there.”

They say he’s a magnificent speaker, witty and quick, and that everyone has a favorite memory of Brodhead orating or reading. Says Pearsall, “You haven’t heard Whitman read until you’ve heard Dick Brodhead read him.”

They say, most of all, that he is a nice guy. “He has a very appealing personality,” says Deputy Provost Charles Long. “He is much stronger-willed and opinionated than you could ever guess from talking to him, partly because he has sense enough to know that no one, including himself, is always right, partly because he knows that no one can lead Yale without building consensus, and partly because he is a good-natured, confident, generous-spirited, and decent human being.”

At baccalaureate every year, Brodhead reads poetry to the graduating seniors. He includes the end of Paradise Lost, where Adam and Eve finally leave the garden:

The World was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide
They hand in hand with wand'ring steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.

“And of course,” says Laurans, “one could say it about him now.” Dick Brodhead is leaving home. The community he leaves behind wishes him the best of journeys.  

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