Clebsch
[stamped, APR -- 9 1980]
Dear Bill
Thank you for the opportunity to communicate with the Search Committee.
Don Kennedy is of course a premier candidate whose talents are well known to you.
You can only gain by also considering the virtues of people like Sid Drell, Dick Atkinson (NSF) and Bill Miller. Searching interviews with each of them about the presidency should precede a final vote. They are all doubtless qualified. I would hurry about Dick lest UC/SD tie him up.
David Hamburg would be unsurpassable as president -- better than, say, as provost with its imperatives for detail. I don't know if he has categorically refused any deflection from his prospective role at Harvard. A team like Hamburg-Kennedy or Hamburg-Drell would be unmatchable in every dimension.
How many exciting intellects of breadth are there these days? And are those the qualifications of a university president these days -- what does Jim March say?
(over)
I prefer that you limit the circulation of this letter to your immediate colleagues. If you would wish me to respond more openly to specific questions I will be happy to try.
Good luck,
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I am afraid I cannot suggest any women or "minority" candidates of comparable stature and relevant experience for the specified role. I am sure that Patricia Harris would be an estimable university president but more appropriately for a state system than for the a private research university campus.
P.S. It may save us both an iota if I record a gratuitous but categorical Shermanian for myself. I have just begun to discharge my responsibilities here; and yes, I am enjoying it very much, though there are many elements of the Stanford community for which it took the deprivation to realize the want.