Brown University has named its Center for Public Service in honor of its 15th president, the late Howard R. Swearer. Community service was among Swearer’s highest priorities; he established the center in 1986.
Note: A statement from President Gregorian and a summary of the Swearer presidency, distributed to news media Oct. 19, 1991, when Swearer died, are appended to this release.

President Vartan Gregorian announced today that the University will name its Center for Public Service in honor of the late Howard R. Swearer, fifteenth president of Brown. Swearer died Oct. 19, 1991, at his home in Thompson, Conn., after a long and courageous struggle against cancer.

“Anyone who knows Brown University knows the deep commitment its students have to community service,” Gregorian said. “The dedication of the Brown student body, which devotes tens of thousands of hours to public service work in Providence and Rhode Island each year, is part of the legacy of Howard Swearer and is among his most precious gifts to Brown. It is fitting that our Center for Public Service should bear his name.”

The decision to honor the former president in this way was made last year by the Brown Corporation, the University’s governing body, but because such honors are generally not given to current members of the staff, announcement of that decision was withheld. (After he left the presidency, Swearer remained at Brown as founding director of the Thomas J. Watson, Jr., Institute for International Studies.)

Gregorian also announced that the University has received a $1-million gift from anonymous donors to endow the work of the Howard R. Swearer Center for Public Service and to commemorate Swearer’s contributions to Brown and to higher education.

Swearer created the Center for Public Service in 1986, with support from the Starr Foundation, to help students integrate community service into their undergraduate careers. Public service was a major theme throughout Swearer’s presidency and continues to be a defining characteristic of the undergraduate experience at Brown. More than 1,200 of Brown’s 5,500 students have committed themselves to regular, continuing projects of public service. The Swearer Center is particularly committed to literacy projects for adults and children and to a range of projects designed to serve children in need.

Brown also serves as national headquarters for the Campus Compact, a national clearinghouse and advocacy organization for public service founded in 1985 by Swearer and two colleagues, Father Timothy Healy, the former Georgetown University president, and Stanford University President Donald Kennedy. Currently, more than 250 colleges and universities are represented in the Campus Compact.

“Howard was very concerned about the messages young people were receiving in the mid-1980s, particularly messages which urged the single-minded pursuit of personal wealth and power,” said Susan Stroud, director of the Center and of the Compact. “He saw public service as much more than a countervailing notion, however. He saw it as way to develop analytical abilities and critical thinking as well as compassion.”

“We want Brown to be a community of compassionate people, involved in serious intellectual pursuits,” Swearer once said, “but never divorced from one of the principal purposes of education, to prepare young people for responsible citizenship.”

The Swearer Directorship

The growing size and importance of international studies was a second major theme of the Swearer presidency. Brown increased to more than 25 its formal agreements for academic exchange with foreign universities, including Wilhelm Pieck University (1979, then in East Germany), Keio University (1980, Japan), Nanjing University (1982, People’s Republic of China), and universities in Western Europe, Brazil, Hong Kong, Korea, Tanzania and Singapore.

In 1986, Brown created what is now the Thomas J. Watson, Jr., Institute for International Studies, uniting more than a dozen academic centers and programs within a single organization. Swearer, a specialist in Russian studies, became founding director of the Watson Institute after he left the presidency, and remained closely involved in its day-to-day operations from his home during his illness.

Last May, during dedicatory ceremonies for the Watson Institute, Gregorian announced another Corporation decision to seek $3 million to endow the directorship of the Watson Institute in Swearer’s honor. That position would incorporate an endowed professorship in a related field, which future directors will hold. Work on that effort began last May and several substantial gifts have been received.

As director of the Watson Institute, Swearer led an organization which provides a University-wide focus for teaching and research on international relations and foreign cultures and societies and serves as the focal point for generating support for international studies and seeking agreement on priorities. The Institute’s 13 affiliated centers and programs engage in a broad range of activities, from improving the teaching of international studies to contributing to policy-oriented research and public outreach. They include: The Afro-American Studies Program, The Alan Shawn Feinstein World Hunger Program, The Center for Comparative Study of Development, The Center for Foreign Policy Development, The Center for Latin American Studies, The Center for Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, The Department of East Asian Studies, The Institute for International Health, The International Relations Program, The Population Studies and Training Center, The Program in Judaic Studies, and The Program in South Asian Studies.

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[Distributed October 19, 1991]

Brown is grateful and proud to have had such a distinguished leader in its fifteenth president, Howard Swearer. He was a modest, but uncommon man, a distinguished educator who led a community of men and women to an unprecedented level of national and international renown during the 1980s. History will remember Howard as one of Brown’s greatest and most beloved presidents. I speak for a University community deeply saddened by his untimely death. All of us—faculty, administration, students, alumni, staff, past and present Corporation members—express our deep sorrow to Jan Swearer and the Swearer family.

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[Distributed October 19, 1991]

Howard Robert Swearer, Brown’s 15th president, took office in January 1977, a difficult time in the University’s history. During his 11-year tenure, he led the University out of a period of deficits and dispirited retrenchment into an era of balanced budgets, wider international academic relationships, bold campuswide experiments in new forms of academic computing and an enviable position in the front ranks of American universities.

A native of Kansas (born March 13, 1932), Swearer graduated from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (A.B., 1954) and did his graduate work in political science and Soviet affairs at Harvard University (M.A., 1956; Ph.D., 1960). Before coming to Brown, he was president of Carleton College in Northfield, Minn.(1970-77). Previously, he worked at the Ford Foundation, first as a program officer in its International Division (1967-68) and later as program officer in charge of European and International Affairs (1968-70). He taught political science at the University of California-Los Angeles as assistant and associate professor and was acting director of UCLA’s Russian and East European Studies Center (1964). He also directed several Peace Corps training programs for Africa and Latin America.

Swearer’s contributions to Brown were summed up by the citation of a surprise honorary degree, presented to him in May 1989 by current president Vartan Gregorian:

Today’s Brown testifies to your work—a school of truly national and even international choice for the ablest young men and women, widely recognized for its standards and achievements in teaching, scholarship and research, managed skillfully to reach its present position of financial stability and high potential for future academic enrichment and development. The entire community applauds your extraordinary accomplishments and will forever honor and cherish your distinguished service.

Major Themes of the Swearer Presidency

Research, scholarship and instruction grew increasingly interdisciplinary and interdepartmental.

• Nearly 25 new centers, programs and departments were created to accommodate scholars whose interests drew upon those of colleagues in other departments. Among the new units are the Pembroke Center for Women’s Studies; the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies; the Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences; the Alan Shawn Feinstein Program in World Hunger; the A. Alfred Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions; the Department of Theatre Arts; the Population Studies and Training Center; and the Center for the Comparative Study of Development.
• The Program in Liberal Medical Education, a new eight-year course of study leading to the M.D. degree, fully integrates medical education with the broader intellectual experience of the entire University. It was announced in 1984.

Brown became an academic institution of international stature. Programs for foreign study and cooperative research flourished.

• Brown’s Institute for International Studies, of which Swearer became founding director after he left the presidency, was inaugurated in 1986. It coordinates, enhances and expands the University’s current programs for international study and research and coordinates the efforts of existing centers, programs and offices.
• The Alan Shawn Feinstein Program in World Hunger explores the social and political problems associated with world hunger and famine and seeks long-term solutions to this persistent human problem. Inaugurated in 1985, it is the only program of its kind in the country.
• A new International Health Institute, created in 1987, supports research in geographic medicine, better primary health care in the Third World and a bilateral international exchange of medical personnel and students. The medical school has developed programs with Brazil, Sweden, several Central American countries, the People’s Republic of China, and others.
• Brown increased to more than 25 its formal agreements for academic exchange with foreign universities, including Wilhelm Pieck University (1979, then in East Germany), Keio University (1980, Japan), Nanjing University (1982, People’s Republic of China), and universities in Western Europe, Brazil, Hong Kong, Korea, Tanzania and Singapore.
• Foreign study opportunities grew to include more than 300 Brown students per year, who study abroad under Brown’s formal exchange agreements.

The size and scope of Brown’s research enterprise expanded significantly.

• External support for research more than tripled, from $13.2 million in Swearer’s first year to $44.3 million in his last full year—an increase of 335 percent.
• The University began to budget money for equipment grants which required matching funds.
• The University added major facilities to support research and scholarship: The Geology/Chemistry Building (1982), The Thomas J. Watson, Sr., Center for Information Technology (1988), Gould Laboratory, including Foxboro Auditorium, which was the pioneering electronic classroom equipped with networked workstations (1982).

Brown became a national leader in academic computing.

• The Department of Computer Science, now one of the nation’s best known, was established in 1979. The department has been a pioneer in using computer workstations for academic applications.
• BRUNET went into service in 1981. The first broadband local area network in higher education united major campus buildings through a single communications utility.
• IRIS was created in 1983. The Institute for Research in Information and Scholarship became a national leader in fostering new computer-driven approaches to scholarship and instruction, while studying the impact of computing on the Brown community.
• Brown became part of an NSF-sponsored supercomputing consortium. High-speed telecommunications put several of the nation’s supercomputing centers at the service of researchers in applied mathematics, physics, engineering, computer science, geology and other disciplines.

The University increased its responsiveness to its societal obligations. Swearer and senior members of his administration assumed a greater role in public service at local, state and national levels.

• Swearer was one of three co-founders of the Campus Compact, an organization dedicated to advancing the cause of public service among the nation’s young people. The Coalition’s national headquarters are on the Brown campus.
• Brown’s Center for Public Service (inaugurated 1987) was created as a resource center for students interested in opportunities for public service.
• The Starr Fellowship Program, supported by a multimillion-dollar grant from the C.V. Starr Foundation, began recognizing and supporting students who had taken time out and worked in a variety of public-service capacities.
• Swearer chaired a statewide commission on revenue at the request of former Rhode Island Governor Joseph Garrahy and was president of the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council.
• Brown’s Education Department worked closely with selected schools in Rhode Island and throughout the country to improve the quality of instruction and the atmosphere for learning. Prof. Theodore Sizer’s Coalition of Essential Schools, now one of the nation’s foremost programs for secondary education reform, began at Brown.
• Members of Swearer’s senior staff chaired or served on a variety of community organizations including the Providence Convention Center Authority, the Rhode Island Committee for the Humanities, the Providence Preservation Society, the Providence Housing Court, the Historic Preservation Commission and the Capital Center Commission.

The University’s entire financial structure and physical infrastructure were revitalized and placed on a more secure course.

• The University’s endowment increased 374 percent during the Swearer years, from $95.4 million in 1977-78 to $356.7 million in 1986-87.
• Fundraising improved dramatically. Gift revenues in fiscal 1986-87 were seven times larger than in fiscal 1976-77.
• After a period when Brown was using its endowment to cover current operating costs, the University produced 10 consecutive balanced budgets.
• Brown concluded the largest building program since the Keeney administration in the 1960s:
• Olney-Margolies Athletic Center (dedicated 1983)
• Geology Chemistry Building (dedicated 1988)
• Faunce House Student Center renovated
• Richard and Edna Salomon Center for Teaching (formerly Rogers Hall)
• John Hay Library restoration (reopened 1981)
• Gould Laboratory/Foxboro Auditorium (dedicated 1982)
• Center for Health Care Studies (dedicated 1982)
• Sol Koffler Wing (J. Walter Wilson Laboratory, dedicated 1983)
• Thomas J. Watson, Sr., Center for Information Technology (dedicated 1988)
• Paul Bailey Pizzitola Memorial Athletic Center (dedicated 1989)
• Orwig Music Library addition

Chronological Highlights of the Swearer Presidency

August 14, 1976 – Chancellor Charles C. Tillinghast, Jr., announces the end of a long search: Howard R. Swearer, president of Carleton College, has accepted the job. “The danger to private higher education is not financial collapse,” Swearer said, “The Danger is a slowing down of momentum, a lowering of vision.” On his first visit to campus, Swearer found maintenance, food service and library workers in a bitter 104-day strike.

January 16, 1977 – John Nicholas Brown, senior fellow of the University, administered the oath of office in a quiet, small ceremony.

April 1977 – Swearer is formally inaugurated as Brown’s 15th president in an 11-day festival of ceremony, distinguished speakers and internationally known musical artists.

September 15, 1977 – The Lamphere Case, a class-action suit charging Brown with sex discrimination in hiring and promotion, is settled out of court. The resulting Consent Decree has shaped Brown’s faculty hiring policy ever since.

June 1979 – Six months after the United States re-established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China, the Brown Chorus became the first American university choral group invited to tour the country. The China tour lasted 16 days.

June 1979 – After 12 years of deficits and drastic efforts to cut the budget, Brown not only achieves a balanced budget, but runs up a $300,000 surplus.

1979 – Swearer signs an agreement with Wilhelm Pieck University in Rostock (then East Germany)—the first exchange between American and East German universities. Brown would form 38 agreements with universities around the world during the Swearer years.

October 5, 1979 – The Brown Corporation votes to embark on a five-year, $158-million capital campaign. It was an ambitious move (the last capital campaign had brought in only $23 million) but essential: A decade of deficits had drained Brown’s endowment to less than $100 million.

1980 – Brown and Dartmouth begin an agreement whereby 20 medical students from Dartmouth come to Brown for their last two years of M.D. study (the “clinical years”).

1980 – Chancellor Richard Salomon and his wife Edna endow the Francis Wayland Collegium for Liberal Learning to encourage the development of extradepartmental courses, lectures and colloquia.

February 1981 – Construction begins on BRUNET, a six-mile coaxial cable which would unite 125 campus buildings in a single campuswide computer network.

1981 – Swearer appears on National Public Radio’s “National Town Meeting” to discuss national service and the need to revitalize America. In fall of 1981, Swearer announced that the C.V. Starr Foundation had endowed scholarships for students who delayed their education or took leaves of absence to work on public service projects.

October 15, 1981 – Fifteen minutes into a lecture by CIA Director William Casey, a group of students rises to recite nonsense verse. In a test of academic free speech and open discussion, 13 students were charged and found guilty of violating University policy. Swearer writes that the his administration would “continue to enforce regulations ensuring free and open discussion.”

1982 – The New York Times’ Selective Guide to Colleges gives Brown, Stanford and the University of Virginia its highest ratings.

1982 – In a speech to the Corporation, Swearer criticizes NCAA rules which, he said, blurred the line between professional and college sports. “We should openly recognize the fact that major football and basketball powers have become in effect farm clubs for professional teams and restructure collegiate athletics to allow the association of professional teams with these universities.” His comments, covered fully in The New York Times, land him on NBC’s Today Show with Clemson President William Atchley.

September 22, 1982 – In testimony before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on European Affairs, Swearer calls for increased government support of Russian and Soviet studies in U.S. universities.

1982 – After a series of incidents, including the vandalizing of Brown’s Third World Center, anxiety and anger among minority students is on the rise. A commission charged with considering community relationships eventually concludes that, although basically healthy, Brown, like other colleges and universities, was troubled by racism, sexism, bigotry and anti-social behavior.

April 1983 – Applications totaled 13,250, setting a new record for Brown while other colleges and universities were sliding. Brown becomes known as a “hot college.”

May 1983 – Swearer received the Susan Colver Rosenberger Medal, the highest honor Brown’s faculty can bestow. It is the first and only time the medal has been given to a University president while in office.

1983 – The Campaign for Brown brings in $182,045,819, more than $24 million over the goal.

1983 – A boom year on Wall Street allows the endowment to grow by 52.9 percent during fiscal 1982, outperforming endowments of all but four or five institutions.

December 1983 – Two years after asking Swearer to investigate the possibility of reinstituting ROTC at Brown, the Corporation called for a faculty poll. A 91-38 recommendation against such a move leads the Corporation to shelve the idea.

April 13, 1984 – The Corporation votes to oppose apartheid through the University’s investment policy. Over the next four years, Brown would sell all stock in companies that did not comply with the most stringent Sullivan Principles for doing business in South Africa.

October 1984 – Brown announces the Program in Liberal Medical Education, which combines pre-med and medical courses of study in a single eight-year experience that placed greater emphasis on the liberal arts.

October 11-12, 1984 – Students vote to request that Health Services stock “suicide pills” for distribution in the event of nuclear war. What had been a symbolic statement for “prevention, not suicide,” became an international, sensational media event. (Prior to the student referendum, the University announced it would not comply.)

1984 – The Pew Memorial Trust gives Brown a $1.5-million grant to put the library catalog online. The new program was in place in the summer of 1988; Brown faculty, students and staff can now access the library’s catalog from personal computers in home or office.

October 1984 – Students interrupt a CIA recruitment session and attempt to perform a citizen’s arrest. The University holds that the students had prevented the free exchange of information. Fifty-six students are found guilty and put on disciplinary probation. Swearer rejects their appeal.

1985 – Minority students charge that security and support services for minorities are inadequate. Swearer responds point-by-point to student demands, with support of the Corporation. Further conflict, and the two-hour takeover of the John Carter Brown Library, result in a “blue ribbon” committee to evaluate minority life at Brown. Partridge Hall becomes the new Third World Center.

1985 – Swearer joins Stanford President Donald Kennedy and Georgetown President Timothy Healy in Washington to announce the Project for Public and Community Service, a coalition of 59 colleges and universities trying to promote civic responsibility among students. By 1988, the project, renamed the Campus Compact, would have 121 member institutions.

1985 – The Department of Energy grants Brown $10 million to help build what is now the Watson Center for Information Technology. Groundbreaking occurs in the fall of 1986, and the building is dedicated in October 1988.

1986 – Swearer is joined by Jimmy Carter, Cyrus Vance, J. William Fulbright and Thomas J. Watson, Jr., to dedicate the Institute for International Studies, the umbrella organization for all international activities at Brown. Swearer would become the founding director of the Institute, which would be renamed after Watson in February 1991.

1987 – In a record-breaking year for fundraising, Brown receives $51.3 million in contributions, 74 percent more than the previous year. Almost half the income was for the endowment.

October 1987 – Swearer tells the Corporation that “the time has come” and announces his intention to step down as soon as a successor could be named, but not later than December 31, 1988. Corporation members literally weep.

July 1, 1989 – Swearer becomes the first director of Brown’s Institute for International Studies, later renamed in honor of Thomas J. Watson, Jr.

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