Word: smithsonian
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...exactly what it took to manage a modern university. As decade ago, Gray—then an Overseer—sat on the committee that selected Rudenstine. Harvard's search was her fourth in four years, having also sat on the executive search committees for Bryn Mayr College, the Smithsonian Institute and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Some had even taken to calling her the "Kingmaker...
...When the Smithsonian announced that it was closing its Conservation & Research Center (CRC), where veterinarians and biologists work to preserve the rarest species, scientists recognized the handiwork of Lawrence Small, the Institution's controversial secretary who has been ruffling feathers--not all of them on stuffed emus--since he took office last year...
Crunch he did. Small is reorganizing the Smithsonian from top to bottom, replacing its quasi-academic structure with a sleek, corporate-style hierarchy. He also launched an aggressive fund-raising campaign that netted $206.6 million last year. "I didn't come here to preside over a gradual decline," Small told TIME. "We need to bring the Smithsonian into the 21st century." He pulled off several very public--and costly--coups, including the rental of two Chinese pandas for $10 million and the acquisition of a George Washington portrait for $30 million...
Well, yes. Small defends the cuts, which include several other offices and roughly 180 jobs. He points out that the Smithsonian manages a wide range of scientific activities, from the Astrophysical Observatory to the Tropical Research Institute. "I'm not doctrinaire. We'll discuss it, and it could change. It's a question of how to marshal our resources. I'd like us to be really great in four or five areas. Meanwhile, we have to make some hard choices...
Those choices still have to get by the Smithsonian's Board of Regents, which meets next Monday, and through Congress, where the CRC has some passionate supporters. At stake, they say, is the mission of the 155-year-old institution: Is it a place where people do science or go to look at it? "The big challenge here," says Small, "is we've got to get a story about science that's completely understandable. To get money in wholesale amounts, you have to sell concepts." In other words, more giant pandas and fewer tree kangaroos...