Rudenstine, Neil Leon [key], 1935–, American scholar, educator, and administrator, b. Ossining, N.Y., grad. Princeton (B.A., 1956), Oxford (Rhodes scholar; B.A., 1959; M.A., 1963). He received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1964 and began teaching English there the same year. He then moved to Princeton, where he was professor of English (1968–88), dean of Princeton College (1972–77), and provost (1977–88). He was executive vice president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in New York from 1988 to 1991, when he became president of Harvard (1991–2001). There he installed the university's first modern provost, promoted affirmative action, helped to unify Harvard's 12 separate schools, and led the largest fund-raising campaign in the history of higher education. He is the author of Sidney's Poetic Development (1967), English Poetic Satire (with G. Rousseau, 1972), In Pursuit of the Ph.D. (with W. Bowen, 1991), and Ideas of Order: A Close Reading of Shakespeare's Sonnets (2014).
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