Customer Reviews

Holding the Center: Memoirs of a Life in Higher Education

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I attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from September 1964 through June 1972; I worked at the MIT Lincoln Laboratories in the summers of 1968 and 1970. I was given this book by the MIT Alumni Association, and found it to be remarkable in its truthful rendition of events that I lived through, and things that came afterwards (going to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in the 1990s), and seeing that Howard Johnson guided MIT through the late 1960s and beyond and the Museum of Fine Arts into a rebirth, and made it all look so easy. I look forward to the video that should accompany this!

Having worked at MIT for more than 35 years, I'm fascinated by how MIT became the most renowned technical university in the world. Howard Johnson's early life is also quite compelling, especially his years as a soldier in France at the close of WWII. From his description of events, it's clear he was smart and personable, but there seemed few signs during his youth of the greatness to follow. It seemed remarkable to me that he didn't get his PhD, but he never explains how he succeeded in academia without it. Indeed he doesn't seem to have been scholarly, there are no technical publications mentioned; he seems instead to have excelled as a program administrator at MIT's Sloan School of Management, quickly moving from professor to Dean, and jumping over previous bosses to become president in 1966, just in time for the political, social and cultural unrest of the 1960s. Going through these times of enormous stress, when he seems to have held MIT together, caused him to switch quickly from president to chairman of the MIT Corporation after just five years, but it was in that role, which he held for a dozen years, that he truly excelled, not just bringing MIT into prominence as one of the top overall universities in the world, but also serving on government commissions and corporate boards, working internationally, and turning Boston's Museum of Fine Arts into a world-class institution as chairman of their trustees. Through it all he seemed to remain a simple, unassuming and unpretentious person who valued people and believed in communication. He must have been extremely likable and inspired great confidence.

I recommend this book highly for those who enjoy autobiography and memoirs, and those interested in MIT or university administration, and those interested in what happened on college campuses during the 60s protests.