Talk:Henry Bienen

student dissatisfaction
I edited the retirement section from dissatisfaction to satisfaction as I believe this was either a typo or a defacement. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.124.237.232 (talk) 07:17, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Untitled
This is honestly a resume, not an article. I go to Northwestern, and he's not nearly as beloved as the article seems to indicated. But I think it's clear that this article has unnecessary praise for him, even to people who don't know who he is. I did remove the bit about the lacrosse team, which seemed to give him credit for their national championship. I did the same with the part about him playing squash with students, which cannot possibly be relevant. Additionally, someone should add something about his prior career. I believe he worked with the IMF in Argentina, among other things. I wouldn't praise his actions unreservedly there either, but they would certainly be an interesting addition.

I don't understand what you mean it is a resume, not an article. I think it is important to discuss the highlights. I think it is very relevant that he plays squash with the students. This is something that sets him apart from other major university presidents. It also reflects the many ways he attempts to engage the undergraduate student body, while also meeting with city, state, and federal officials. Bienen attends numerous sports games, student plays, and regularly meets with undergrads. Henry Bienen routinely has to travel to DC among other places to help ensure that Northwestern gets fairly treated by Congress and Federal departments in funding. Frankly, few students have an awareness of what he does, so I don't see the relevence of whether he is beloved by people who don't know his work.

mjs

I would like to add some more comments on this issue.

Bienen's term was lacking in significant number of controversies over his decisions with few exceptions. Princeton is a very different university. Some were afraid that Bienen would try to transform NU into another Princeton in a way that would harm NU. Today, there is very little evidence to suggest that Bienen did anything like this. The only example that could potentially suggest this is Bienen's closing of the Dental School. It certainly was very controversial. Alumni of the school were in some cases upset. However, the closing allowed the University to devote even more resources and space to the medical school, which is one of a number things Princeton does not have.

Northwestern going to the Rose Bowl on January 1, 1996 early on during Bienen's career at NU was very fortuitous for him. It would be interesting to consider how much it effected his view on the Athletic Department. Princeton, for sure, has a significant athletic department, but one with considerable differences from NU. I think this is an interesting area to look at. The Rose Bowl had many extremely positive effects on NU, and the football team continues to largely contribute positively with the University. However, there were two significant controversies regarding the Football team in the past ten years. The Athletic Department's decision to get Randy Walker to replace Gary Barnett, who decided to leave NU, is widely praised today.

Bienen has been very successful with growing the Northwestern Endowment which is key to funding lots of programs. The building projects on both the Evanston and Chicago Campus are extensive. Some of them have been dorms contributing to a significant enhancement for undergrad campus life. However, much of the building relates largely to research. All of the expansions to research facilities should significantly expand Northwestern's standing is a very important global research basic research center.

I think that Bienen's successes at Northwestern can be contrasted with the much more mixed legacy of Lawrence Summers at Harvard.

It would certainly be very interesting to look at Bienen's early work as a political scientist. If Bienen ever does leave his post as president of Northwestern, it would be very interesting to hear his views on current issues in American foreign policy. He could potentially be an important new voice on foreign policy.

I have to say, the poster above if anything appears to have an irrational bias against Bienen. He never, to the best of my knowledge ever worked for the IMF, the source of many apparent global conspiracies.

mjs

He worked for the World Bank and the CIA, among other institutions. Not the IMF, but damn close. --65.24.40.143 (talk) 04:53, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

mjs, if you think the above poster's bias against Bienen is irrational, than the majority of NU students during his tenure are also irrational. The majority of us did not have positive feelings for him - most of us probably didn't even have any opinion on him because we didn't know anything about him. Which is not exactly something he'd like to put on his resume. Most of the criticisms are unverifiable (e.g. a rumor about him being very rude to a student), but to compensate we should change the tone to put Bienen in a neutral light. 68.40.145.242 (talk) 06:21, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Editing this article
I am the poster from above, and I am a recent NU alum. There was a rumor about him working for the IMF at school, but it was actually the World Bank. This is stated on his website: http://www.northwestern.edu/president/shortbio.html

Not even consulting his website is a sign of basic negligence.

He has done a series of things that are not mentioned in this article, as is reported by his NU homepage listed above:

"Mr. Bienen has been a visiting professor at Makerere College in Kampala, Uganda (1963–65), at University College in Nairobi (1968–69), at Columbia University (1971–72), and at the University of Ibadan (1972–73). He was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University (1976–77), a Polsky Fellow at the Aspen Institute (1982–83), and a member of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton (1984–85).

Mr. Bienen has been a consultant to the U.S. Department of State (1972–88), the National Security Council (1978–79), the Agency for International Development (1980–81), the Central Intelligence Agency (1982–88), and the World Bank (1981–89). He served as a member of the senior review panel of the CIA in the late 1980s."

If I get time, I will add these things sometime soon.

However, again, the achievements of sports teams under his tenure is less than relevant, because he does not directly manage them. If you wanted to discuss them, you should emphasize how he has not changed Northwestern's generally low reputation in sports. The basketball team remains depressing. Of course again, this is all generally irrelevant.

This article is simply too glowing, and for this reason I suspected that there was a conflict of interest. Here, various statistics are listed like the rise in SAT scores, the endowment, etc. But the tone is all wrong. Bill Clinton's article does not read like this; the article is not simply a list of the number of jobs that he added in his presidency, of the yearly economic growth rates and of the times that he has went jogging with fellow citizens. A speech of his own could sound like that, but not an encyclopedia article. There needs to be a balanced, rational review of Bienen's work. A human interest stories like who his squash partners are is not relevant.

The lack of criticism combined with praise for things that he is not really responsible for means that this article remains in need of revision. 76.29.56.100 18:58, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

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