Madame Provost

Women, I love them," said Yale President Kingman Brewster Jr. one day last spring. His comment was inspired by this year's 188 coed graduates -the first women to complete four undergraduate years at Yale. Last week Brewster demonstrated his enthusiasm for women at Yale by appointing Historian Hanna Holborn Gray to the key position of provost. When she takes up her post next July, Mrs. Gray will be the university's chief educational and financial officer and possible heiress to the presidency.

Although Mrs. Gray never studied at Yale, she has "a very special feeling" about the place because she grew up in New Haven. Her father, the late historian Hajo Holborn, came to Yale in 1934 as a refugee from Nazi Germany. Mrs. Gray herself went to Bryn Mawr before receiving her doctorate from Radcliffe. She has taught at Bryn Mawr, Harvard and the University of Chicago, where her husband Charles now is a professor of English history. Since 1971 she has been dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern, and after describing herself as "stunned" by her new appointment, she adds: "I never expected to leave here. Now I have got to educate myself for this."

There are hard lessons to learn. Yale has been running at a loss for about five years (current deficit: $1,000,000), and Mrs. Gray already knows that, as she puts it, "academic planning is intimately related to the operating budget." Then there is the problem of coeducation. Says Mrs. Gray: "I think there is a feeling among the Yale women that they have not been fully accepted in the community. This is a disadvantage for the girls and poor for the university."

At 42, Mrs. Gray is not unprepared for her future. Aside from her practical experience, her scholarly studies on the Renaissance include a chapter on "Machiavelli: The Art of Politics and the Paradox of Power" in a collection of essays honoring her father. Defining the theories of the 15th century master of Florentine intrigue she wrote: "The virtuoso of power ... can be judged by the work he produces. It is good or bad according to its effectiveness, and what renders it noteworthy and successful may be ascribed to the qualities, actions and policies he has brought into play."

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