Under William R. Harvey, the university has gained millions, but critics and some fans fear his wrath
William R. Harvey, Hampton University’s president, has studied power -- the style of the powerful, and the accouterments of influence.
It shows in the formal decor of his office here on this riverfront campus,
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and in his blue pinstripe suit as he sits in a high-backed red armchair, a phone within reach on a small table. The design of the scene is vaguely familiar, and later, he’ll confirm that notion when he waves toward an adjacent, smaller room with a cluttered desk.
“That’s my working office,” he confides. “I got that idea from the Oval Office. You know how there’s a working office, and then one for more-ceremonial purposes.”
Mr. Harvey relishes having rubbed elbows with U.S. presidents, who have appointed him, as head of this historically black institution, to various educational commissions over the years. In the waiting area outside the “ceremonial” office, Mr. Harvey, who has supported both Republicans and Democrats, has a wall of autographed presidential photos, mainly of himself with Presidents Bush and Reagan.
But his regard goes beyond a fan’s admiration. Mr. Harvey has studied and appreciates their power, and he understands the value and uses of influence.
It’s the understanding of many an ambitious and self-made man. During Mr. Harvey’s 22 years as president, he has used that awareness in his drive to transform Hampton from a beleaguered institute with a perennial deficit into a wealthy and respected university, now well into a $200-million capital campaign.
That study of power also has helped propel his own ascent, from a childhood in segregated Brewton, Ala., to a career as an academic, a businessman, and an entrepreneur. Since 1986, Mr. Harvey has owned a Pepsi-Cola bottling company in Michigan. He also sits on several corporate boards.
People who know Mr. Harvey or have worked for him say he’s a visionary leader, a tough taskmaster, and an astute financial manager. They say he’s an intense and driven fighter. And they say he’s a savvy fund raiser who knows how to charm potential donors and members of the Board of Trustees, as well as Hampton’s employees and students.
“He’s like a great card player, a great poker player,” says Elnora D. Daniel, president of Chicago State University, and a former provost at Hampton under Mr. Harvey. “He knows how to read people and how to play the game.”
But some current and former faculty members and administrators say Mr. Harvey’s hands-on style has allowed little room for public dissent at the university. They characterize the president as “a control freak” who “rules the university with an iron fist.”
Mr. Harvey describes himself as a team-oriented manager. Yet on other occasions, he acknowledges that his experience as a young man in the U.S. Army “was an integral part of my development” and taught him the importance of discipline. He also says, “Here at Hampton, loyalty is part of the team approach.”
His critics say he relies on a tight chain of command that gives him final approval of all decision making. “People are afraid to speak because he might dismiss them,” says one former faculty member, who, like most of Mr. Harvey’s critics, requests anonymity. “He doesn’t want his leadership challenged.”
Mr. Harvey denies that, calling the complaints “unfounded.”
Charles V. Willie, a professor emeritus at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, says many historically black colleges in the past have been “dominated by an all-powerful president,” because those institutions often didn’t have “the resources to permit them to make several mistakes.” That has begun to change now, he says, and he gives Mr. Harvey credit for progress in that direction at Hampton.
Mr. Willie, a former vice president of Syracuse University, also praises Mr. Harvey for strengthening Hampton’s academic programs and financial viability, and for encouraging senior administrators toward other college presidencies.
“That kind of ambition is a role model for other historically black colleges,” says Mr. Willie, who graduated from Morehouse College and has studied and written about such institutions. “I give him credit for stabilizing Hampton, and I think the strong hand he has kept on that university is to make sure there are no errors in its successful mission.”
When Mr. Harvey arrived at Hampton in 1978, it had a $486,000 operating deficit after a decade of red ink. The endowment had dwindled from $36-million to $29-million. Enrollment had dropped, and so had corporate giving. In the face of the black-power movement of the 1960’s and 70’s, many of Hampton’s high-society white trustees -- Rockefellers and duPonts among them -- had left the board.
Mr. Harvey immediately set about wooing corporate executives back to the board. Its 31 members now include W. Frank Fountain, a senior vice-president of government affairs for Daimler Chrysler; Clarence E. Lockett, a vice president and corporate controller of Johnson & Johnson; and George R. Lewis, president and chief executive officer of Philip Morris Capital.
Mr. Harvey also stepped up the university’s fund-raising efforts. Today, Hampton’s endowment is $169-million, among the 200 largest in the nation, and one of the largest of black colleges.
The university received $14.9-million from foundations and corporations last year, about eight times more than the $1.8-million total of such gifts in 1978. Alumni donations last year reached $1.5-million, compared with $202,977 in 1978.
Hampton also has balanced its budget every year since Mr. Harvey’s arrival. He accomplished that in part by making deans and department heads adhere to a quarterly budgeting system that forced them to justify their expenses. Any requests to exceed that allotment must be approved by him.
“Faculty members didn’t like that,” Mr. Harvey says. “But I thought we needed to instill that discipline in order to get things done. I believe in running higher education as a business.”
What’s more, he requires deans and department heads to raise the funds for one-third of their budgets. Their success at that is a factor in their job evaluations.
“Fund raising is everyone’s job at Hampton,” says Rodney Smith, vice president for administrative services. “People who don’t fit in with that model don’t stay here very long.”
Most faculty members accomplish their fund raising through research grants. But professors in the humanities and arts say they face a tougher task than those in business or the sciences.
“It’s not fair, but that’s what we have to do,” says Enid P. Housty, director of the humanities program. “There’s no allowance for your academic area.”
Mr. Harvey’s fiscal conservatism has allowed Hampton to add 45 academic programs, including a doctoral program in physics, since 1978, and enrollment has more than doubled, from about 2,700 to 5,700. In 1984, the trustees voted to recognize that growth by changing the name from the Hampton Institute to Hampton University.
The trustees, many of whom have been recommended to the board by Mr. Harvey, have largely allowed him to set Hampton’s direction, says Wendell P. Holmes, Jr., the board’s chairman and the owner of a funeral home in Florida. “The board doesn’t disagree with him often.”
When it does, Mr. Harvey says, he pulls back and takes more time to win them over. He usually succeeds, Mr. Holmes notes.
The president has relied on similar patience and savvy in Hampton’s current $200-million campaign, which will end in 2002. The university officially announced the campaign in 1998, and by then had already raised $110-million in the drive’s “quiet phase,” which began in 1993. The goal is believed to be the largest ever for a historically black college.
Mr. Harvey says he emphasizes Hampton’s excellence rather than its history when wooing potential donors. “I don’t bill Hampton as a historically black institution,” he says. “I’ve wanted to appeal to people who could give us a lot of money, and who could appreciate quality and efficiency. And I think at some point it gets old to talk about guilt money. So I’ve never used that.”
During the past two years, Mr. Harvey has focused the campaign’s efforts on corporations, and the amount raised now stands at $134-million. The largest gift so far is $5-million from the late John T. Dorrance Jr., who was a chief executive of Campbell Soup Company and a Hampton trustee. The rest of the gifts have been $1-million or less, Mr. Harvey says.
Mr. Harvey, who earned a salary of $190,852 in 1997-98, says he spends at least 70 percent of his time raising money or cultivating donors. He travels often, and that spurred him early in his presidency to set up a management team, led by the provost, to oversee the campus. He keeps in touch by phone and through weekly meetings with his administrators.
But hunting donations is his passion. He keeps a constant eye out for potential donors by milking his business and academic connections and scanning newspapers and other periodicals for people or companies who might be convinced to give.
“He’ll snoop and he’ll dig,” says Sulayman Clark, director of the campaign. The development office then does research on the prospects Mr. Harvey identifies, and uses a “prospect rating scale” to gauge whether specific donors are worth pursuing. Corporations are judged in part on whether they have a sizable African-American consumer market.
The president says he doesn’t hesitate to call on Hampton’s corporate trustees for information on or introductions to potential donors. “It’s important for institutions like Hampton to have trustees who have influence and affluence, people who can help open doors and make connections.”
In 1986, his relationship with Roger Enrico, president of Pepsico Worldwide Beverages, who served on Hampton’s board, helped lead to Mr. Harvey’s buying the bottling company in Houghton, Mich. Mr. Harvey’s wife, Norma, was on the board of the bottling company at the time he bought it.
The connections between Mr. Harvey and Pepsi drew criticism from some affiliated with Hampton, including a former president of the university, Roy Hudson, who told newspapers then that it was “a real conflict of interest for an educator and scholar” to own such a business and to draw Hampton into the cola wars.
Hampton has since become a Pepsi campus, but Mr. Harvey defends that decision and says Pepsi made the university the best offer for exclusive soft-drink rights, outbidding Coca-Cola by more than $1-million. He also sees no conflict of interest in his purchase of the bottling company, and denies that his relationship with Mr. Enrico played a role. The bottling business doesn’t take him away from his work as president, he adds, because he has hired a general manager and staff to run the company for him. He declines to disclose his annual earnings from the company.
Many Hampton students and faculty members accused Mr. Harvey of selling out the university for the sake of financial and political gain when he brought President Bush to the campus in 1991 to speak at commencement and receive an honorary degree. Among their objections, they pointed to Mr. Bush’s veto of the 1990 Civil Rights Act.
About two-thirds of the graduating seniors staged a silent protest when Mr. Bush was introduced, remaining seated and quiet. Many students raised their fists when he received the degree.
Before the commencement, Mr. Harvey had written a memo stating that the critics should “be mature and astute enough to understand that a visit by the President of the United States will create many positive benefits which will impact directly on salary, research opportunities, scholarships for students and the like.”
Mr. Harvey framed a hand-written letter from Mr. Bush, sent soon after the event, thanking him for his “leadership in averting what might have been a controversial situation.” It dominates the wall of U.S. presidential photos.
The silent protest followed a 1990 change in university policy, requiring that all campus demonstrations be approved in advance by the administration, and threatening to take away financial aid from students who participated in unauthorized demonstrations. That policy remains in effect, says Deandra Williams, Hampton’s student-government president. But students have other opportunities to speak out, she says, and they often voice their concerns to the student leaders, who have monthly meetings with Mr. Harvey.
Hampton never has had a faculty senate, and the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors dissolved shortly after Mr. Harvey’s arrival. He didn’t ban it, but professors say they felt it was futile.
Mr. Harvey insists that students and faculty members are free to express complaints, and he points to his meetings with students and the monthly faculty meetings over which he presides.
“We have a venue for anybody to speak out on anything,” he says. “If any student wishes to speak out about any issue, they may do so, as may the faculty.”
But in late 1996, the head coach of women’s basketball, Fred Applin, was removed from his coaching job after giving an interview to a local newspaper in which he publicly questioned Hampton’s commitment to gender equity in its basketball programs. Less than a week after the interview ran, Mr. Applin publicly apologized to the university, its athletics director, and Mr. Harvey for going public with his grievance.
Four months later, Mr. Applin formally resigned. Reached at his current job as an assistant coach of women’s basketball at the University of Texas at Austin, he now has little to say about his departure from Hampton. “I don’t remember that far back,” he says. “I have to look at what’s important for me and my family, and it was important for us to just move on. Dr. Harvey can help you go places.”
Mr. Harvey declines to comment on Mr. Applin’s departure."I don’t discuss personnel matters,” the president says.
Over the years, Mr. Harvey says, he has turned down offers from corporations and other universities, as well as cabinet-level positions offered by U.S. presidents. He declines to name specific positions.
His commitment to stay at Hampton, he says, stems from his desire to serve African-Americans through education. That commitment has driven his priming of senior administrators for college presidencies elsewhere.
“He never forgets from whence he came,” says Joann Haysbert, Hampton’s provost. “He’s forever looking to bring somebody up.”
Current and former administrators at Hampton also say Mr. Harvey demands strong loyalty from those who work for him. In return, he can be ferociously protective, and he takes personally any injustice done to them, Ms. Haysbert says. “You don’t do wrong to his folk, or you’ll hear about it,” she says. “He’s a fighter, now.”
On the wall opposite Mr. Harvey’s U.S. presidential photos hangs a painting of two boxers, “Combat,” by the African-American artist Claude Clark. The black prizefighter, seen from the back, looms over his smaller, white opponent, and looks like he’s winning.
EARLY YEARS:
Born in Brewton, Ala., on Jan. 29, 1941, the son of a contractor who built houses for wealthy white people. Attended Southern Normal School, a private school in Brewton for black children. The area at that time had no public high school for black students.
HIGHER EDUCATION: B.A. in history, Talladega College, 1961; Ed.D. in higher-education administration, Harvard University, 1972.
ACADEMIC CAREER: President, Hampton University, 1978-present; administrative vice president, Tuskegee University, 1974-78; vice president for student affairs, Tuskegee University, 1972-74; administrative assistant to the president, Fisk University, 1970-72; assistant for governmental affairs to the dean of the graduate school of education, Harvard University, 1969-70.
OTHER EXPERIENCE: Enlisted soldier, U.S. Army, 1962-65. Has stayed in the Army Reserve since leaving active duty, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. Secondary-school teacher in Pensacola, Fla., 1965-66. Directed an Alabama branch of the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity, 1966-68. Owns the Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company of Houghton, Mich. Sits on several corporate boards.
PERSONAL: Married, with three children. Collector of African-American art, and a voracious reader of mystery novels.
SOURCE: CHRONICLE REPORTING
http://chronicle.com Section: Money & Management Page: A40