Before I meet Brian Rosenberg, I know I’m going to like him. We’re both Jewish, we’re both from New York, we both like books. McPherson was accessible and all, but this guy is going to be My President. We’re going to be tight.

Yet somehow, after spending an hour in his office, filled as it was with engaging and pleasant conversation, I found myself feeling somewhat disillusioned. Don’t get me wrong: there was small talk, there was reclining, there was laughter. Heck, there was even sincerity. Not to mention how impressed I was with the guy: he’s articulate, he’s informed, he’s impatient, he’s seemingly all that Macalester needs in a President. In fact, I left Weyerhauser ready to sign up for his fan club.

So maybe I’m not disillusioned after all. Here’s what I learned: for better or worse, Brian Rosenberg is not Mike McPherson. He’s not from the Midwest, his wife is not named Marge and he is not a teddy bear. He’s a President.

[Also, for the sake of full disclosure (and those to whom I griped Monday evening), I did at one point lose my otherwise flawless poise and ask him if he “felt disadvantaged as a white male.” The answer, in case you were holding your breath, was a pretty resounding no. No worries, I think we’re still buddies.]

LT: How do you explain your job to someone who doesn’t know anything about what a college president does on a daily basis?

BR: Boy, that’s a good question. The job is made up of a lot of little things, which is what makes it interesting for me. But I think essentially it’s about trying to provide direction for the institution, to try to anticipate what things are going to be like in a week or a year or five years, and to make sure that Macalester is in a good position to deal with the things that come its way... I think one of the things that we can do that’s most important is set an example for the way that people on campus interact among others, the nature of discourse, and most importantly to set an appropriate tone -

[The phone rings. Rosenberg apologetically but without hesitation answers: the caller is his secretary and, apparently, there is nothing he can do about whatever it is right now]

BR: It’s to set an appropriate tone [yes, he remembered exactly where he left off], to establish connections, to ensure that people here don’t exist in silos, that they communicate across campus, to ensure that the educational mission, which is what we’re here for, remains the central thing. That all sounds very, high-falutin’. The truth of the matter is that a lot of what you do in this job is unexpected and is focused on a particular detail, or trying to put out fires or deal with small problems and crises. It’s a very detail-oriented and personnel- oriented job. One of the things I like about it is that when you come to work in the morning you can’t predict what you’re going to be doing that day.

LT: Is it different from your old job in that way?

BR: I think the chief difference is that you’re working with a broader range of constituencies. When you’re a dean, you’re the chief academic officer and you’re working chiefly with the faculty. The range of people and issues that you have to deal with is a little bit wider. When you’re president of a college you can’t do anything in as much depth. The risk is that you can skim along the surfaces and not have a really exhaustive knowledge of any part of the institution, so I try to work against that and understand as much of the college as I can.

LT: How will you go about getting to know the campus?

BR: I really believe that in the first year of this job I have to spend a lot of time listening to people. I have to have a lot of conversations in which I do less talking than the person that I’m with. I have to make sure that I get out of the office, and make sure that I visit people where they work on campus. I have to be visible in the campus center and in the residence halls and at sporting events and at all these things that make up the lives of the people here.

LT: How do you go about entering an already-established institution in a position of leadership?

BR: It’s a challenge. I think that you can’t pretend to know what you don’t know. If you do that people will see through you right away; you have to be honest about the ways that you don’t know the place. Clearly, when you bring in a president from the outside, at a college or really at any institution, it’s a matter of somehow meeting in the middle. Clearly, I come here with certain visions and expectations and skills, and the college has a whole set of goals and accomplishments and priorities. I think the responsibility is more mine to learn about the college’s, but to some extent, I’m sure the college wants to learn about mine. If the search committee did its job, those things will come together. You want to bring someone into a place like this whose vision is not exactly the same. You want some change; you want to bring someone in who will be compatible.

LT: Why are you compatible with the school?

BR: I think that the mission of this place is exactly right. Liberal arts colleges are the institutions that I believe most passionately in. I think schools like this do the best job of providing an undergraduate education in the world. I think the fundamental nature of this place is something I’m incredibly comfortable with. I think the particular commitment to academic excellence in the context of internationalism, civic engagement and diversity is exactly right. I think that from a social perspective, the mission is the right one. It provides an important social service.

LT: How do you think your academic background prepares you for the job?

BR: I think the fact that I’ve spent so much of my life studying and teaching literature is helpful in a lot of ways. I think that certainly it has taught me to be a careful writer and a careful reader and a careful speaker. It’s taught me to be very sensitive to the nuances of language. It’s taught me never to take anything too seriously. You can’t read as much Dickens as I have and not come away with a sense that nothing, or almost nothing, is beyond laughter. Dickens is a very anti-administrative writer, which makes my choice of career at this point somewhat ironic. I’ve learned from reading Dickens that you’ve got to be careful not to let the institution overwhelm the person. I try to keep that in mind.

LT: How do you do that?

BR: A, by never taking myself too seriously, and B, never allowing bureaucracy to be more important… than human connections. I’m not a very rule-oriented person. I probably shouldn’t say that to students, huh.

LT: What do you think will be the biggest challenge in the next year?

BR: Everybody has a different sense of what the college can and should be – the challenge is to bring people together around a shared vision. I think it’s doable, but I think it’s a challenge. By the end of this year, I’d like people to know what I’m about and what I can accomplish.

LT: You’re not planning any task forces, are you?

BR: [laughs] I think it’s very good that Macalester has been as planning-oriented as it has. I think the sense that I’ve gotten is that people are about ready for those efforts to coalesce into something that has a little bit more of a clear outcome. So that’s my goal, to take some of those strings and weave them together in to a stronger strand.

LT: I see you’ve got a copy of U.S. News and World Report on your desk. The top story on our website for the past month has been that we’ve made it back into the top 25 – how important is that really?

BR: U.S. News is a quandary… There’s almost no intrinsic relationship between the ranking and the quality that actually goes on within the institution. The problem is that a substantial portion of the ranking is based upon your academic reputation, which is very subjective and tends to be self-replicating; schools that have a good reputation one year have a good reputation the next, and that reputation is often based on no real knowledge. I try to resist any kind of ranking which attempts to put in the form of a formula the relative merit of one school over the other. I think if you measure success in relation to U.S. News chiefly you are making a big mistake. I think you need to define success in your own terms as an institution and then aim for that kind of success.

LT: How do you define success?

BR: I think, for Macalester, it would be having the resources in every sense—human, financial, physical—to provide a first-rate undergraduate education of the kind that we envision, one that has components of civic engagement and internationalism and diversity in it, to a high quality student body. That’s our central goal. Coca-Cola makes soda, and we teach.

LT: So we’re like a factory?

BR: That’s right. That’s the business. And so success, in our terms, is providing the strongest academic program that we possibly can. To do that you have to have the right students and you have to have the right resources, but at heart what we’re about is educating.

LT: A conversation that has been ongoing during my time here among members of the community has been that we feel like what’s going on here is really extraordinary, and that internally we’re probably stronger than we’ve ever been – but people don’t know it. Is that something that you are conscious of?

BR: Sure, sure. I think one of the challenges for Macalester and one of the challenges for me is to make sure that the good work that goes on here is recognized and understood. Some of this is like chasing a goat. The fact of the matter is that colleges in the Midwest have a harder time gaining national recognition than colleges in the East. There’s a subtle—and sometimes not so subtle—bias, I think, against Midwestern institutions. And so we have certain things that make it a little bit more difficult for us to gain visibility. You could drive yourself crazy trying to overcome all that. There are a lot of ways to do that; I think the alumni are crucial. I think the best advertisement is a large, vocal, supportive alumni base. Each one of those people acts like a living advertisement for Macalester. That’s one of the things I’d like to do, make sure that the alumni are in fact advertisements for the instution. We need to do other things too… we need to increase our applicant pool.

LT: How much of a priority is need-blind admissions?

BR: Financial aid will be one of the real challenges for us, as it is going to be for most colleges. Financial aid is one of those issues to which there is not a single right answer. It’s a complicated equation… It is a terrific thing that we have been need-blind, and I think our goal should be to continue to have the resources to meet the need of the students we accept. Inevitably, with money as tight as it is, you have to think carefully about how you want to balance the availability of money to educate the students we admit versus the amount of financial aid we can provide. We’re at a very early stage of trying to think that through. Fewer and fewer colleges are need-blind, and we’re aware of that. We are need-blind, which means that our discount rate is higher than their discount rate and that they have more resources to put in to their academic program. It will be a challenge for us to balance all that.

LT: How do you see your role in terms of Macalester’s commitment to multiculturalism?

BR: I think that the most important thing to do in almost any area is to make sure that you hire the right people and then let them do their jobs well. One of that things that Mac has done over the last couple of years is to create a couple of new administrative positions specifically on that issue. We have a Director of Multicultural Life and we’re currently searching for a Dean of Multicultural Academic Affairs. That’s a pretty significant institutional commitment in a whole variety of ways. So I want to get the best possible person in to that position. I think it’s important for me in my position to reiterate the importance of diversity to our mission. It’s there, and we either have to take it seriously and continue to have it as part of our mission or not have it in our mission. We can’t have it both ways.

LT: How is Macalester different than Lawrence?

BR: I think that Macalester’s student body is more diverse in a variety of ways. Both schools have a large international student population, but Macalester’s domestic student population is less Midwestern in its background, more national. And I think that the institutional culture here is a little bit more liberal than at Lawrence. I think that the location of Macalester in the Twin Cities makes for a different relationship with the community, provides more opportunities for civic engagement which is so important here. There are more things I think the students can do and connect with. Part of Macalester’s commitment to internationalism and civic engagement are articulated in Macalester’s mission in a way that they’re not at Lawrence. There are a lot of ways in which the institutions are very similar.

LT: What were you like in college?

BR: I would never have anticipated doing what I am doing now. I was pretty quiet and private in college. I was an English major; I had entered college planning to be premed and quickly changed…. I knew pretty early that I wanted to teach English in college. That’s what I like to do. I love literature… it seemed like a great career. It’s very easy to get lost at a larger place to get lost at college and that’s what I did. I met my wife and lived, I thought, a pretty private life at the college. I got a lot out of Cornell; it’s a terrific school. I don’t think that what it provides… is as strong as what is provided at a place like this. It was hard for me when I applied to graduate school to find three faculty members to fill out a recommendation despite the fact that I was a strong student. I think that students who attend a place like Macalester have a real advantage.

LT: What do you do when you’re not working?

BR: Right now, I try to spend a lot of time with my kids. We are very, very close. And especially with a job as consuming as mine is now, I try very hard to preserve a family life. And mostly that’s not very organized or complicated, but it’s just [a matter of] spending time with them. I like to travel with my family. Over the past couple of years, I’ve taken the family to London, and Japan… I think it’s good to expose the kids to other cultures. I like to read a lot…

LT: What do you like to read?

BR: I like to read mystery novels… I read mostly fiction and some history, some current events sort of stuff, but fiction more often than anything else. I’m pretty athletic. I like to play racquetball; I like to try to get over to the rec center on my bike.

LT: How do you like the field house?

BR: Yeah, we need a new building. I can attest to that firsthand.

LT: Have you been in contact with former President McPherson?

BR: We’ve spoken often, both before I accepted the position and since I did. He’s been wonderfully helpful in providing me with information and advice and at the same time making it clear that I was free to ignore any advice that he gave me – which I haven’t done because it was all good advice. I think it was an ideal situation for me step into because my predecessor was leaving on such good terms. It’s made my transition easier because I’ve been able to draw on him.

LT: What’s the best advice he gave you?

BR: To remember always that everything you do and say in some way or another is a public statement. You need to give a lot of thought to even the most casual conversation or interaction because it may not mean a lot to you, but it means a lot to the person with whom you’re interacting. It’s as if there’s a megaphone attached to you all the time, and that can be a challenge.

LT: Do you think you’ll teach at all?

BR: I’d like to. I managed to teach once at Lawrence. I want to get a sense of what my schedule is like and what the team-teaching possibilities might be, which is what I did at Lawrence. I think there might be opportunities for me to teach with someone in the English department or someone in History. They’ve been kind enough to grant me a title of Professor of English so I’m a member of the department.

LT: What does that mean?

BR: It’s just another title.

LT: You don’t get another salary?

BR: No, not another salary. But I think it’s a nice acknowledgement of my professional interest and accomplishments and it does make it easier if I want to teach at some point.

LT: I was going to have you name three fun facts about yourself, but I’ve got a better idea. Have you ever seen Amelie?

BR: No. [I proceed to explain the beginning of the film, in which each of the characters is introduced along with several quirky “likes” and “dislikes” – a get-to-know-you tactic employed by History professor Teresita Martinez-Vergne this semester.]

BR: I’m not that quirky a guy. [he ponders his limited quirks] I suppose people who know me would say that I’m a pretty finicky person.

LT: Finicky, huh? In what way?

BR: I’m very particular about what I wear, and what I eat –

LT: So you’re a neatfreak?

BR: My wife would not say I’m a neatfreak. If you saw my closet, you would not call me a neatfreak. But I’m particular. And, I’m a pretty controlled person, which can be good and bad.

LT: Controlled?

BR: Well, I don’t let loose a lot. I have a temper, I try to control it, and I usually succeed. But that means I internalize a lot, so I have a lot of internal strife as a result and I don’t let it out… And I’m a pretty intense person. I’m a New Yorker.

LT: Have you lost your temper on the job yet?

BR: No, not yet. I might at some point, but no, not yet.

LT: What do you think will set it off?

BR: The things that frustrate me tend not to be the big issues. I’m perfectly prepared to deal with the things that you expect to deal with on the job, whether it’s a financial crisis or raising money or trying to build a building…What I think I find most frustrating are personnel problems that don’t yield themselves to easy solution, and usually seem to be the result of people not behaving like grown-ups. I really believe passionately that people need to treat one another with respect. When that breaks down, I get very frustrated…

LT: Let’s talk a little bit about being form New York. What do you miss about the city?

BR: When you’re in New York, you feel, for better or worse, as if you’re in the center of the world. It just has that feeling about it and that sense of itself, and to the extent that you move away from center that you kind of feel like you’re moving away from the heart of things. Certainly I feel that much much less than I did twenty years ago, but there’s always that sense. And that’s where all my family is. It’s hard being in a place where I have no family. I especially regret that now that I have kids. I would like them to be able to have connections with their cousins and grandparents and so on, so being away from family is tough. It’s kind of tough being away from a culture with which you’re so familiar…. I’m not sure I’ll ever feel fully at home in the Upper Midwest the way I do in New York. But on the other hand as I’ve lived away from New York I’ve gotten to appreciate things about other parts of the country and there are things about New York that drive me crazy. I like the fact that people around here are fundamentally respectful of one another. That’s kind of nice. It’s a little different. [laughter]

LT: Is there anything about the culture here that drives you crazy?

BR: No one’s in a rush.

LT: I know! Whenever I’m waiting in a long line that’s moving slowly I’m always looking around and no one seems to care!

BR: Right, sometimes I feel like I’m in the Stepford Wives.‘Why aren’t people getting all worked up and impatient the way I am?’

LT: I am!

BR: Yeah, you’re a New Yorker.