Derek Bok

Derek Curtis Bok was born on 22 March 1930 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and served as president of Harvard University from 1971 to 1991. After earning a B.A. at Stanford in 1951 he took a masters degree at George Washington University, joined the Harvard law faculty in 1958 and was named dean of the law school in 1968, a time of great student unrest in which he pursued reforms to meet the changing needs of students and society. Chosen to succeed Nathan Pusey in 1971 as the first non-Harvard alumnus to lead the university, he worked to broaden its mission in its relationship to the wider community while retaining its tradition of academic excellence. He pressed for a stronger minority presence on campus without accepting strict quotas, and his books include Beyond the Ivory Tower (1982).