It is a tricky thing to be both a scholar and a politician. Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe experienced this, excruciatingly, when the Faculty Review Committee systematically shot down nearly all of his proposals for academic restructuring last week. The committee was right to reject his suggestions-but Jaffe's position is, regrettably, complex.I met the disappointed dean for an early-morning interview last Friday. He was tall, charismatic and cautiously thoughtful; he had a frank and engaging manner, and although he chose each of his words with a noticeable discretion-forgivable, perhaps, considering who I was working for-he was affable and easy to talk to. Constantly, however, this tension between his roles as scholar and politician persisted.

The economics professor was responsible for creating a plan that would please everybody. However, caught between the stubbornness of an intellectual who knows his ideas make sense and the diplomatic dexterity required of an administrator, Jaffe miscalculated.

He miscalculated when he thought that the faculty-hundreds of scholars like himself-would accept the sensible suggestion that certain departments needed to be reorganized for the sake of efficiency. Nowhere in his equations did he predict that the very mention of change could pique such a sharp resistance and offense in Brandeis professors.
"I've never felt like anyone on the faculty was attacking me personally," Jaffe said in a cheerful, businesslike tone, "but I must say it's somewhat disappointing."

He miscalculated when he thought that students-rational beings like him-would act as enrollment figures implied they would, welcoming the cuts and additions he proposed. Never did he account for the instinctive repugnance students could feel at the suggestion that subjects like ancient Greek should be phased out.

"The thrust of my proposal was to strengthen the school," he said, frowning somewhat, "and yet, in general, students have been opposed to it. That surprised me."

He miscalculated-perhaps most gravely-when he thought he could just announce his ideas when the campus was not ready to hear them.
I asked him how it felt to have his proposals so emphatically rejected by the Faculty Review Committee. "I guess..." he paused, fixing his eyes ahead of him, and replied slowly, "it's disappointing."

Throughout most of the interview, however, Jaffe was aggressively optimistic, and he believes that the University will eventually see the logic in his suggestions. Given the limited resources of the University, improvements to any programs inevitably require sacrifice from others, and numbers point toward students wanting to take fewer classes in humanities and more in the social sciences.

"If responding to students' demands is fundamentally threatening our tradition of liberal arts," Jaffe told me with the confidence and eloquence, "then I'm guilty."

Perhaps, however, there are certain things for which the laws of supply and demand fall unfortunately short.

I asked him: What if what people want doesn't really make sense; what if our attachment to ancient Greek is more emotional than rational; what if some students instinctively disliked his proposals, not because they had any intention of taking ancient Greek themselves, but because it just seemed intuitively wrong to them to phase out something so fundamental? If his aim is to give students what they want, how does he reconcile that some things we find important don't really have a logical basis?

Jaffe the scholar thoughtfully moved his hand to his mouth, and stared intensely at the wall behind me. He was silent for a moment. Jaffe the politician answered, "I don't know what to say other than...you know, two steps forward, one step back...hopefully now we'll take another two steps forward, you know then we may end up taking another step back..."
Then Jaffe-with the amiable but unyielding resolution that characterizes him-added, "The alternative is to give up, and I'm not ready to do that.