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Appointed
March/April 2004
by Jennifer Kaylin

Former Procter & Gamble CEO John Pepper '60 believes in “playing to win,” an outlook that will come in handy as Yale faces a $30 million budget deficit, a fragile relationship with its unions, and a massive campus renovation and construction campaign.

Pepper, who served on the Yale Corporation for eight years and was the senior fellow for the last year and a half, resigned from the Corporation at the end of 2003 to take a full-time position at the university: vice president for finance and administration. Pepper, who retired as chairman of Procter & Gamble in 2002, says his decision “comes out of a love of this place” and a belief that after a 40-year-career in business, “I could do some good.”

Pepper cites two projects among his top priorities: to implement a cost reduction plan “the right way, not on the backs of people,” and to smooth the relationship between Yale and its unionized workers “so that never again will we be looked at as the bottom of the barrel when it comes to labor relations.”

While at Procter & Gamble, Pepper took steps to advance the diversity of the workforce, including leadership positions. After the collapse of the Berlin wall, he oversaw the company’s expansion into eastern and central Europe, as well as China and Southeast Asia, and he made a major commitment to the growth of the company’s pharmaceutical division.

Pepper, who is responsible for non-academic financial and administrative matters, replaces Robert Culver, who left the post last summer. (Bruce Alexander '65, the vice president for New Haven and state affairs, stepped in on an interim basis.) Since starting on January 1, Pepper has launched analyses aimed at “doing business smarter” in areas that include travel, printing and publishing, procurement, and leasing.

Ever the careful planner, Pepper says he made only a two-year commitment to the job. “That’s not definite,” he said, “but that way, if I should leave, nobody can say, ‘Aha, something must have gone wrong.’”

Remembered

Dr. Robert Arnstein '41, chief psychiatrist at University Health Services from 1960 to 1989, died on October 27. He was 84 years old.

A native of New York City, Arnstein studied medicine at Harvard and did his residency in psychiatry at Yale. He joined Yale’s division of mental hygiene in 1955, beginning a long career counseling Yale students during a period of change not only for student life but also for psychiatry. Sam Chauncey '57, a friend of Arnstein’s and former secretary of the university, wrote this tribute:

The beauty of this man was that each facet of his life blended into another. Art collector, counselor, father, friend, husband, New Haven citizen, philanthropist, poet, sports fan, Yale man—he was like a glorious colorful quilt. Each piece was superb, but the whole was magnificent.

His concern for, and interest in, human beings was extraordinary. In his profession he explored people and constantly learned more about the way people think and behave. Outside his professional life, his desire to learn about the human way continued. He would initiate a conversation with someone he did not know, and that person sensed Bob’s respect and interest. He and his own humanity seemed to step quietly aside so that the person he was with took center stage. Bob and his wife, Mary, were philanthropists who extended themselves in helping and being hospitable to others.

One would not have called Bob an unusually articulate speaker, but he spoke eloquently through art. Whether in doggerel or through a painting he and Mary purchased or in his work with the Creative Arts Workshop, he was always saying something to us and about us. His mind was more open than most. He could see things in art and the human condition that the rest of us could not.

What a loyal man he was: loyal to his family, his patients, his university, and his friends. He could not speak ill of anyone. The worst I remember is that he once rolled his eyes when I mentioned a very radical Yale graduate.

Bob believed in the good and the creative in all of us. That belief was the foundation of everything he did.

Frederick “Fritz” Redlich, a psychiatrist who was dean of the School of Medicine from 1967 to 1972, died on January 1 at the age of 93. Redlich, a native of Austria, came to Yale in 1942 and pioneered the field of social psychiatry. Among his six books was a recent biography of Hitler from a psychological perspective.

Joseph Warshaw, who chaired the pediatrics department at the School of Medicine from 1987 to 2000, died of cancer on December 29 at the age of 67. Warshaw, who was an expert in fetal development and neonatal care, had served as dean of the medical school at the University of Vermont since leaving Yale in 2000.  

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