Fund-drive officials attribute the poor response to the natural inclinations of donors, not poor administrative leadership.

"There are no graduates of interfaculty programs and there are no alumni of the central administration," says Thomas M. Reardon, director of development, who will succeed Glimp as vice president for development and alumni affairs.

Reardon adds that the administration has thus far not emphasized this aspect of the campaign, but he believes that donors will respond if they are asked to give.

At the same time, however, fundraising veterans are quick to admit that the second half of any campaign is more difficult because the most reliable donors have already contributed large amounts of money.

"I don't know how this will all work," Reardon says.

But some directly blame Rudenstine for the poor performance of his initiatives. It reflects a persistent lack of effort on the part of the president to solicit donations for central initiatives, according to former provost and Leverett Professor Jerry R. Green.

"I have not seen a major gift to the central fund in three years," Green says, adding he does not believe Rudenstine will increase his efforts. Rudenstine has chosen not to promote the central fund and has lost a number of potentially major donations for the central adminisstration as a result, Green says.

The only parts of the center's efforts which have met with any success are a few inter-faculty initiatives, such as the new Mind, Brain and Behavior (MBB) concentration, and some university-wide professorships.

The future of Rudenstine's initiatives is now in doubt. According to Vice President for Finance Elizabeth C. "Beppie" Huidekoper, a few of the projects can be undertaken without major additional funding, but central funding will be critical for the implementation of most of Rudenstine's goals.

Coordination vs. Centralization

The center's fund-raising woes are symptomatic of the immense problems Rudenstine has faced in the attempt to create a more unified Harvard, problems which have sometimes been traced to the president himself.

Rudenstine always articulates his vision of a more closely-knit university with words like "coordination" and "cooperation" but never "centralization"--a word that many here fear. Even though the schools are now encouraged to work together, the idea of a strong central authority is still taboo.

Some believe Rudenstine has succeeded in walking the fine line of cooperation.

"I think it's going to go down as Neil's legacy," says Joseph S. Nye Jr., dean of the Kennedy School of Government. "Before, the whole has been less than the sum of its parts. Only with the emphasis on the University will Harvard achieve its potential."

But in other ways it is unclear how much change there has been in terms of cooperation between the schools.

Some of Rudenstine's attempts at coordination--the litany of new meetings required between schools, University-wide financial reforms and the planning of Project ADAPT--have created a bureaucracy that stifles change, critics charge.