The first in an occasional series examining incoming President Morton Schapiro’s record at Williams College.
Freshman year, Jeff Kaplan hung out with “Morty” Schapiro at “entry snacks,” a Sunday night snack break at his freshman dorm.
As a sophomore, Kaplan ran into Schapiro and his wife — “eating cheese or whatever, with everybody else” — at an informal study abroad information session. Kaplan chatted with his school president about an exchange program with Oxford College.
At Oxford during his junior year, the Williams senior watched football with Schapiro, a few trustees and other students at the Oxford Blue pub.
And this past fall, Kaplan visited Schapiro’s home “probably four or five times.”
But compared to other students, Kaplan said he did not have a “particularly close relationship” with Schapiro.
“I got to know him because he came to my entry snacks but he comes to lots and lots of entry snacks and he meets lots and lots of students,” he said.
Even so, Kaplan and other students and faculty at Williams College, the small liberal arts school in Massachusetts where Schapiro has been in charge since 2000, describe Northwestern’s incoming president as a remarkably open and accessible leader.
“He’s kind of like an Energizer bunny,” said Will Dudley, an associate professor of philosophy who teaches a class with Schapiro. He combines “all of the responsibilities of being the president with choosing to teach on top of that, with going to all the various sporting events and other events that he goes to, with having people over at his house probably 15 to 20 times a month,” Dudley said.
Both Marianne Wanamaker and Shar Jaidev, the student representatives of Northwestern’s search committee, said the committee put an emphasis on a potential president’s ability to interact with students. But they acknowledged that the jump to a school with four times as many undergraduates could hinder Schapiro’s ability to interact with students.
Wanamaker, an Economics graduate student, said she brought this up with Schapiro when she met him: “And his response to that was, ‘It’s all about where you put your priorities,’” and that staying in touch with students would be a high priority for him.
Schapiro’s penchant for remembering names and faces may come in handy with more than 8,000 new undergraduates to meet. When Jaidev mentioned her high school during their meeting, Wanamaker said, Schapiro rattled off the names of a couple Williams students he knew who went there.
“That floored me,” Wanamaker said.
Students and faculty at Williams were also impressed with his memory. Kristina Brumme, who graduated last year, said that when she introduced herself to him as a freshman, he immediately started talking about her older brother, whom he had golfed with.
“The number of students – that he knows by name and he knows where they come from and he knows what their extracurricular activities are – is incredible,” Dudley said.
Schapiro also offered students access to notable speakers and events. When Paul Farmer came to Williams during Brumme’s freshman year, Schapiro invited her pre-medical society to a personal, informal seminar with Farmer, as well as a dinner at Schapiro’s house in which Brumme was able to meet the world-renowned doctor.
Schapiro often invites students to his house for big holidays and other events such as the arrival of a new freshman class. Jeremy Goldstein and Peter Nurnberg, co-presidents of the Williams College Council – the school’s version of student government – said that they’ve been to a dinner for Jewish students to break fast at sundown during Yom Kippur, but that Schapiro also offers dinner for the Chinese New Year and for the Muslim celebration of the end of Ramadan.
The Williams College Council goes to Schapiro frequently to solicit advice and direction, Goldstein said. Goldstein described him as “deferential” and “reassuring” in those meetings, telling the College Council whom to talk to rather than offering specific solutions himself.
But when the Council asked Schapiro in October to partake in an open forum with students about the effects of the economic crisis on the university, he agreed, on three days’ notice. “Invite anyone you want and I am fine with any format you choose,” Schapiro wrote in an e-mail to Goldstein and Nurnberg.
Schapiro – who has a background in the economics of higher education – lectured for about half an hour and then took about 10 questions from a crowd of about 100, Goldstein said.
Nurnberg, who took a class with Schapiro and said it was “easily one of the best classes I’ve taken since I’ve been here,” said that this kind of engagement with students was common.
He’s open to students’ ideas and will “get them directly from students, rather than going through a filter,” Nurnberg said.
This extends beyond the Council, Nurnberg said. “He goes to a tremendous number of athletic events, and not just the big-ticket items,” and frequently attends campus performances and student productions.
Nurnberg added, “He’ll be very popular at Northwestern.”