Leadership Profiles

“The first rule of wing walking is that you have a hold of a cable and you don’t let go of the cable you have until you have a firm grip on a new cable.”

“I think companies get so focused on their solution, that as the world changes, they really have trouble changing with it.”

“[I]t took a little guts for those who voted for it to do it but there I guess is where leadership came in.”

“The ability to build those collaborations across campuses in life sciences was critical because there were good basic scientists on the Bloomington campus and extraordinarily good clinicians as well as basic scientists on the Indianapolis campus and the question was how do you get them all to work together.”

“I tried to build some comfort level. Said everything’s on the table. We opened it up. We had a full year of discussion and then we began to move forward.”

“I think when you look at the most profound change that has happened in this country and the world, it’s when ordinary people undertook extraordinary action, sometimes for common sense goals, but that’s always been the thing that really brought about change.”

“If we as a person or if we as a group are unwilling to change, then you’re not going to get anywhere. You can’t become what you need to be in this world by just being what you are today.”

“I said that leadership performance is contingent on the leader’s personality and the degree to which the situation provides power and influence.”

“I told them that there was a very simple rule for peace at the university and that was they could protest the war all they wanted and I would join them in that. I wasn’t afraid of having marches or demonstrations or I had noticed articles in the student paper against the war. But, at the same time, they had to respect the nature of the university.”

“I said, ‘Mr. President, you didn’t put on three Republicans and three Democrats, you put six fishermen on this report and we wrote it in the Land O’Lakes, Wisconsin after a terrific night of good fishing.’”

“I said, listen fellows, I’m in charge of this place and we happen to be emerging as the Catholic university in the world. It seems incredible to me that Catholic women can’t come to a Catholic university simply because they’re women. We’re going to start admitting them next year and we’re going to admit more every year...”

“[O]rganizations can be changed. You do not have to accept the status quo. They can be made better. Leadership can be made better in those organizations.”

“I see leadership as being about results and making a difference; therefore, I’m very much of a mind that leaders are change agents.”

“So my first meeting with the executives who were there, the vice presidents who had been appointed by Jim Brown, the first president, I asked them all to write their letters of resignation. I said, ‘I want all of your letters of resignation, you can put them in your drawer, but if I ask for them, you’ll have them ready.’ And that was my meeting with them.”

“What I was charged to do was create an organization within the university that would recognize what adult learners need and attract them to the university. The University of Evansville is a private school and we had a big state institution just across town. And they wanted to survive and in order to survive, they had to bring in adult students…”

“If you stay in tune with what’s happening worldwide, you get a strong feeling of what needs to happen to make a change.”

“I think that a person who is in the leadership position needs to recognize what my mother said way back when, that everybody has a gift, and try to find what that gift is.”

“It is helping people understand how to put together changes in their life situation because they now have this problem that isn’t going to go away, but they’re going to have to be living with. There is a leadership in that.”

“It was very important. It was good for the School of Medicine, it was good for the School of Engineering, it was good for the students who didn’t want to spend time in West Lafayette. They still had to take some courses in West Lafayette, but they preferred to be full-time here. And, of course, we are now such a huge campus, it was just part of the growth of the campus. It was right for the campus.”

“I think they’ve been terrific. But, I mean, the downtown is a much different place. IUPUI is a great university with the most powerful internal commitment from the university to take it to true greatness--with its partner at Purdue--than it’s ever had. ”

“We helped those faculty get the information they needed to write a successful grant proposal. We worked with them on a proposal. We offered to sit on the Board of Directors with those different projects. So, overall, through the years, yes, I think we were successful, but not all through the Graduate Office. We supported a lot of what faculty did and we made it a priority, and I think that was helpful too. ”

“We need to have world leaders behind closed doors, but with experts helping them come up with strategies that will solve these global problems. I think that is how it has got to happen. We probably have the start of the technology to do that, but we have no clout.”

“I became president in 1971, and in 1974, I introduced a reorganization of the university that fundamentally changed the relationship of many parts of the university. One of the objectives, and clearly stated, was to knit together Bloomington and Indianapolis professional programs, with one School of Public and Environmental Affairs. There was no articulated policy of that kind prior to 1974. I don't know what people assumed, and most people I think didn't even think about it.”

“If ordinary citizens who have something to say have a channel to do it, we can change. We don’t have to accept the things that right now we’re so angry about. I've always believed that – I’m not against protests; protests have a really important place, but I think that we can all do more. We can show up with the signs and then the next day we can do the hard work of solving problems. ”

“When I worked in the White House, I worked on women’s issues, women’s employment issues – that was my little niche – and it was really different back then. Women couldn’t have credit cards in their own names, they couldn’t inherit their own family farm, even if it was their father’s farm. We couldn’t get loans from banks. We couldn’t do apprenticeships to learn a trade. There were many, many changes that have occurred in my lifetime. I worked really hard on women’s issues in particular. There was a great cadre of women, including Jean Lipman-Blumen in Washington, and Joy Simonton and Leslie – I forgot her last name at the moment – Leslie Wolff, and Nancy Pelosi was there. I mean, there was a cadre of women in Washington that were working for change and so we passed 110375, Affirmative Action Executive Order...”

“A leader can make significant change, but most of it these days is quite negative. They can undo things. They can undo good things, but they can’t get through the kind of thoughtful, humanistic, progressive ideas.”