David Baltimore's Redeeming Presidency

Courtesy of Bob Dob IllustrationsDavid Baltimore has faced down a congressional committee and parleyed with presidents and kings. But on one morning at the California Institute of Technology, he found himself face-to-face with a busted car, broken file cabinets, and other useless junk heaped on the lush Beckman Lawn that distinguishes Caltech. A sign, posted near the pile, declared its worth to be $1.8 million: The price of an unpopular postmodern sculpture Baltimore wanted to see created on the lawn. Such is the life of a college president.Protests in peacetime are uncommon at Caltech, where heron wade in bougainvillea-shaded lily ponds, jasmine and camellias scent the air, and most of the students and faculty are submerged in basement labs. But a proposed Richard Serra sculpture called Vectors, a steel wall that would have zigzagged like metallic kudzu over one of Caltech's largest lawns, inspired months of petitions and public meetings in protest of its approval by Baltimore.Whatever meaning Serra may have intended, Vectors came to symbolize the alienation between the administration and the rest of Caltech. For Baltimore, an art lover, the issue was personally painful. He deeply wanted Caltech to own a world-class piece of art. But he finally backed down.Afterwards, the administration held more open meetings than it ever had before, and allowed student membership on two faculty committees. "Serra was a good lesson," says Marianne Bronner-Fraser, Ruddock Professor of biology and chair of the faculty. "The administration learned to communicate more--the message was really heard."A relaxed Baltimore could even joke about the Serra standoff during a radio interview. "They can look back and say, 'I got the president not to build that damn thing,'" he related.THE REDEMPTION This is the same David Baltimore who years earlier arrogantly answered a congressional committee's queries about his ethics, as described in historian Daniel Kevles' book, The Baltimore Case. Kevles' book is a finely detailed study of a decade-long National Institutes of Health fraud investigation prompted by a single article in Cell.1 Though his name was attached to the case in the public mind, Baltimore himself was never accused of anything beyond standing up for a coauthor whose work had been challenged. Full exoneration for both Baltimore and his colleague came too late to prevent Baltimore's forced resignation from the presidency of Rockefeller University, but it did come in time to impress a Caltech presidential search committee.Baltimore was "first choice, unequivocally," relates Kip Thorne, Feynman Professor of theoretical physics, who headed the faculty search committee that forwarded six candidates to the board of trustees. In 1997, after the controversy that made a bonfire of his reputation, Baltimore rose like a phoenix to take responsibility for both Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Labora-tory, administered by Caltech under contract from NASA. The two budgets, for the school and propulsion lab, total more than $1.8 billion (US).Many still wonder why a Nobel laureate would trade a life of pure science for a life of constant meetings and managerial decisions. "You can't beat the Nobel Prize," Baltimore agrees. But he also cites as one of his proudest achievements the founding of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, where he served as director from 1982 until 1990. "I was able to build it from the bottom up. That is a rare opportunity." His stewardship of Caltech is a further example of his belief in the value of institutions. "I'm making a perfectly conscious trade-off between positive values," he explains. "You can't half-run a university. At this time in my life, I think I can make enough of a contribution as president of Caltech that it's worth limiting my science."In truth, his science may not be all that limited. Baltimore's lab has published 13 papers since January 2002. "We are working on protecting cells against HIV infection using interfering RNAs expressed from lentivirus vectors and on tumor immunity using gene therapy protocols," he says. In addition to directing the work of his lab, Baltimore is considering his own biology initiative at Caltech. It is likely to "involve methods of engineering the immune system to respond to pathogens and cancer," he says, but he declines disclosing more at this nascent stage.Baltimore's shifts between science and administration parallel dichotomies in the history of the Caltech presidency. According to Kevles, Caltech's choice of president oscillates between those perceived as strong administrators and those seen as strong scientists; between the shy and the gregarious; between managers and intellectual leaders. Impressions of Baltimore's style vary among the faculty--who describe him as "distant and rude" or "charismatic."Six years into Baltimore's presidency, nearly all of Caltech's division chairs agree that the biology division has not become "first among equals." As for the biology division itself, Baltimore says, he has consciously chosen not to influence the direction of its research. "[He] does serve as a superb source of advice, from experimental details to general directions of the entire field," according to Elliot Meyerowitz, biology division chair.Baltimore himself jokes that he balances the roles of scientist and administrator "poorly." His lab, with 12 postdocs and three graduate students, is a third the size of his group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). "I have no illusions that I am fully satisfying all the time commitments that a mentor should," he says. Baltimore's postdoctoral fellow, Xiao-Feng Qin, says his mentor's "extraordinary memory" makes up for his lack of time. According to Qin, Baltimore can startle people by bringing up points they made months before. "He remembers other people's research better than the people themselves do," Qin says.Lab members, faculty, and administrators praise Baltimore's ability to quickly cut to an issue's core, making the best use of a tightly scheduled day. In one respect, Baltimore may have the best of both worlds. "He seldom comes to divisional faculty meetings, but he often comes to biology seminars," Bronner-Fraser says.Courtesy of Caltech Caltech's Beckman Lawn MAKING ENDS MEET Even those who know Caltech are surprised at its size. Baltimore compares it in style and atmosphere to his own alma mater, Swarthmore College, "although we are distinctly not a liberal arts school!" he adds, laughing. Challenges inherent in the presidency of Caltech are a direct result of its unique strengths and size: A renowned science institution with 279 faculty and slightly more than 2000 students (graduate and undergraduate). To stay competitive, Caltech must provide the same facilities as the larger schools, even though they cost more per person. As a result, says Baltimore, Caltech is "intrinsically inefficient down to the groundskeepers."Caltech vice provost David Goodstein explains that the overhead rate--the money an institution is permitted to take from federal grants and use for operating expenses--"is the lifeblood of a place like Caltech." Tuition is only 3% to 4% of real budget, compared to 60% at the University of Southern California, Goodstein says. Consequently, the faculty forms the financial power base. "Each faculty member is bringing in something like six or seven hundred thousand dollars on the average," he estimates. Goodstein's figure includes faculty without labs, including mathematicians and historians, so the average for biologists may be even higher.Because they bring in so much money, researchers wield great power, says Tom Tombrello, chairman of Caltech's division of physics, math, and astronomy. "The faculty think of themselves as entrepreneurs and businessmen, and they think of the president as the landlord and tax collector." He adds, "They are quite able to tell Dr. Baltimore or me when we're off track."FORWARD INTO THE PAST Traditionally, Caltech has had faculty perform administrative roles, with generally--but not always--happy results. "The professionalization of the position of vice president of student affairs seemed to me a necessity," says Baltimore. Margo Marshak, hired to fill the position in 2002, is the first female vice president in Caltech history.That Caltech would celebrate the sort of milestone that other schools achieved 30 years ago offends Kathleen Schulweis, former head of the Caltech Women's Center. She credits Baltimore for helping the Women's Center on his very first day at Caltech. The Center was supposed to be moved to a trailer, but Baltimore found space on campus, just before the move. "He stepped in and on faith alone came through," Schulweis says.Still, nearly every woman interviewed expressed skepticism about Baltimore's ability to change the status of women at Caltech. Frances Arnold, professor of chemical engineering and biochemistry, sums up the views of many. "He has great intentions, but the reality is there are [barely] more women faculty here than there were ten years ago," she says. According to Caltech's diversity statement, the number has risen from 25 in 1995 (before Baltimore's arrival) to 30 in 2002. This year, two more women have joined the faculty.Diversity remains Caltech's goal and its Achilles' heel. The school offers a summer program for African-American high school students, but so few currently attend Caltech that a sardonic campus joke asks: "How do you know it's summer at Caltech? There's black students on campus."Baltimore readily acknowledges the problem. "We are very aware of this," he says, "and we are not proud of it." He cites Marshak's hiring and the appointment of the associate dean and director of minority student education, Erica N. O'Neal, as evidence of Caltech's commitment to change.Perhaps nothing sums up how much Caltech has achieved--and how far it has to go--better than this: The number of underrepresented minorities on the faculty is the same as the number of Nobel laureates: four.The difficulties in attracting minorities and women at the undergraduate level may be only a symptom of a larger problem. At Caltech, undergraduates can get research experience denied them at larger schools, where an introductory biology course could be twice the size of Caltech's entire first-year class. But the price is a grinding work schedule and a narrow curriculum. The administration is looking at reform, according to Baltimore. "The students are surviving, and not flourishing," he says. "Many people leave with a sense of relief." Caltech is invaluable for undergraduate students who want to be research scientists, but the school may lose students who seek a more varied social and academic experience.By contrast, graduate students and postdocs overwhelmingly exult in their good fortune. A biology postdoc says that when he was considering the position, he asked everyone he knew who'd done graduate or postgraduate work at Caltech for advice, and they endorsed the school. Arnold, trying to encourage more women to apply for faculty positions says: "Caltech is a really great place to be. I wish there were more of us to enjoy it."THE SECRET OF LIFE Perhaps the most telling praise of Baltimore comes from a former postdoc, Carlos Lois, now a professor at the Picower Center for Learning and Memory at MIT: "Because he's very confident in what he knows, he's confident in what he doesn't know. He's not afraid to say, 'Can you explain that to me?'"Of course, some things can't be explained. But that does not stop a few strangers from inquiring. Baltimore gives another insight into the demands of balancing the roles of researcher, administrator, and famous scientist: "People keep e-mailing me to ask, 'What is the meaning of life?'" Baltimore says, with amusement. "And they want me to e-mail them back quickly with an answer!"When asked about the value of science, however, Baltimore does e-mail an answer quickly: "For many it gives meaning to an otherwise meaningless, amorphous life," he writes. "Many people find their meaning elsewhere--in friends, in dogs, in religion, in the self-reflectiveness of writing, etc. But Caltech people largely find it in the continual contest with nature."Karen Heyman (klhscience@yahoo.com) is a science writer in Santa Monica, Calif.; she worked briefly at Caltech. 1. D. Weaver et al., "Altered repertoire of endogenous immunoglobulin gene expression in transgenic mice containing a rearranged mu heavy chain gene," Cell, 45:247-59, 1986; retracted by D. Weaver et al., in Cell, 65:536, 1991.THE BENEFITS OF MUNIFICENCECaltech benefits from the enormous generosity of two former chemistry graduate students, Gordon Moore, chairman emeritus of Intel, Santa Clara, Calif., and Arnold Beckman, founder of Beckman Instruments (now Beckman Coulter), based in Fullerton, Calif. Moore's $600 million gift to Caltech in October 2001 was one of the largest single donations to a university in US history. As for Beckman, people constantly get lost on the Caltech campus between buildings named for him.But Caltech, founded in 1891, still has far fewer alumni than the larger, older schools with which it competes. Beckman and Moore's munificence can even be a bit of a double-edged sword. "Younger alumni who are still in graduate school or working on postdocs may feel smaller gifts aren't valuable," says Gary Dicovitsky, vice president for development and alumni relations, emphasizing that Caltech would appreciate any donation.The recession has taken its toll on donations, too, as Caltech embarks on a $1.4 billion fundraising campaign, anchored by the Moore gift. "We are hurt by the stock market falling," says Baltimore, who spends an estimated 30% of his time raising money. "We had at least one gift lined up in the same ballpark as Gordon's, and the guy has no money left."Caltech is now looking at budget cuts. "We're going to try to do it by nibbling at the edges, rather than by cutting out big pieces," Baltimore says. He later emphasizes, "There will be no cuts in science programs as an explicit statement of policy."

David Baltimore's Redeeming Presidency

David Baltimore has faced down a congressional committee and parleyed with presidents and kings.

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