It is equally unreasonable to run a university as a "participatory democracy," the approach to governance that once existed in Europe. That approach in European institutions of higher learning was appealing to professors because it was democratic. But those institutions also suffered because they lacked an executive decision-making process; making changes became virtually impossible.

I would not say that Harvard possesses any sort of absolute dominance. And I personally do not take the rankings of schools all that seriously. However, I think that Harvard's global visibility increased significantly in the 1930s and 1940s and that the new commitment to excellence at Harvard spread to other institutions.

I focus on faculty, as opposed to facilities, budgets, endowments or students. I do so because I believe, based on many decades of work as a teacher, a scholar and an administrator, that the quality of the faculty determines the quality of the university. Everything else flows from the quality of the faculty. If the faculty are good, you will attract good students and you will have alumni who will raise funds for you.

Equally important for the promotion of excellence in the university is an emphasis on shared governance. The faculty needs to be involved directly in the process of running the university and in the setting of priorities.

There seems also to be a tremendous risk to indigenous cultures if we insist that all scholarship be conducted in English. We are, for example, dealing with ancient and very highly-developed cultures in Korea, Japan, China and the Middle East. What is the impact on cultural and scholarly vitality forcing everyone to do their work in English? I do not have an answer, but this issue has been very much on my mind.

Harvard introduced the now famous ad hoc system whereby a group of experts in the field of the faculty member to be promoted are consulted concerning the stature of that scholar. This move made the opinion within the field, rather than the clubby relationship within the department, the determining factor in the promotion of professors.

The rank of a university is similar to an index number say like the NASDAQ index. I don't understand how you can take an institution like Harvard, Stanford, or Michigan, and represent it by an index number. The concept makes no sense.