A Law-School Prof at Haas’s Helm
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Former U.S. representative and current Stanford Law School professor Thomas J. Campbell will take over on July 1 as dean of the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Campbell steps into a position vacated by economist and BusinessWeek columnist Laura D’Andrea Tyson, who left Berkeley last summer to take the helm at London Business School (see BW Online, 8/14/01, “Tyson Takes on London”). Campbell, whose wife, Susanne, heads the Berkeley-based Institute of Management, Innovation, & Organization, says it’s too early to lay out specific plans for his tenure as dean, but be notes the “crisis in the respect the average person has for the Western economic system” and stresses the importance of restoring that confidence. PUBLIC SERVICE. Though Campbell has no formal B-school experience, Berkeley’s selection isn’t quite a surprise. Like his predecessor, who before her Berkeley stint was President Bill Clinton’s National Economic Advisor, Campbell comes from a background steeped in politics. A Republican, he represented Silicon Valley’s district in Congress from 1989 to 1993 and from 1995 to 2001, where he served on the Banking & Finance Committee and the International Relations Committee’s international economic subcommittee. He had an unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate in 1990. From 1993 to 1995, he served in the California State Senate. Though Berkeley’s campus has traditionally been a liberal bastion, Haas spokesperson Ute Frey points out that Campbell has a reputation as a political moderate — fiscally conservative but socially liberal. An antitrust specialist who joined Stanford’s faculty in 1983, Campbell holds a JD from Harvard Law School and a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago. His “very good connections to Silicon Valley,” and fund-raising abilities honed in 12 years of elected office mean he and Haas are a “match made in heaven,” says Frey. “COMPLICATED BUREAUCRACY.” The politician-cum-dean has big shoes to fill. While at Haas — No. 18 in BusinessWeek’s B-school rankings — Tyson fought with the university system to retain revenues raised by the B-school and to charge market prices for tuition and executive programs. Under Tyson’s tenure, Haas also launched a joint Executive MBA program with New York City’s Columbia University. Campbell will have to deal with “a fairly complicated bureaucracy,” says Edward Synder, dean of the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business. “It’s a job that has a lot of constituents, even outside the business school.” Good thing for Campbell that he has political know-how as well as academic credentials. |