Meet the college president turned music man

Leon Botstein is president of Bard College. Photo provided to China Daily

When Leon Botstein is asked to recall his first day walking into the office as president of Bard College, he needs to think for a while. After all, it was 35 years ago.

"Oh yes, I remember. There were lots of people greeting me," he recalls.

"I could also see the shock in their eyes."

That surprise was understandable. He was 28 and had landed the college's top position.

But the presidency, in fact, is Botstein's second.

When he was only 23 and fresh out of Harvard with a master's degree in history, he moved into the top post at Franconia College in New Hampshire. He was then the United States' youngest college president.

David Schwab, the chairman emeritus of Bard's board of trustees, once said about Botstein: "He is a very unusual guy."

But Botstein sees his first post as president as a "gigantic mistake".

"I was not ready at all," he says, with a laugh. And to Botstein's own surprise, as well as Bard's board of trustees', he never imagined that, decades later, Botstein would still be at it.

Over the last 35 years, Botstein has transformed Bard College from an ordinary liberal arts college into an intellectual college with global influences.

While other colleges are cutting back, Bard College, with about 1,000 undergraduate students, is expanding its library, has opened an innovative center for curatorial studies and is starting new graduate programs.

He has helped Bard's music programs earn worldwide acclaim, keeping Bard under the spotlight.

Botstein, who's now 66, has simultaneously reached the pinnacle of a second career: He is music director and principal conductor of both the American Symphony and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra.

He started the Bard Festival three years ago to explore important ideas in music and save classical music.

Regarded as the "happiest college president", Botstein will come to China to share with local music conservatory school leaders and students.

For three weeks in June 2012, Bard College Conservatory of Music, conducted by Botstein, will tour China, performing in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Hubei's provincial capital Wuhan and Guangdong's provincial capital Guangzhou. The tour will also be part of the Bard Music Festival.

"Classical music is dying," Botstein says.

"Unlike other music genres, such as pop music, which keep on progressing and offering something new, classical music just repeats itself. But I believe that China is the future of classical music now that many children are learning and enjoying it."

He says 30 students from China study at Bard College, and he plans to open branch schools in China.

His education approach is simple, he says. It centers on allowing students to develop freely but through hard work.

"I believe that success relies on 99 percent hard work and 1 percent talent," he says.

He stays up until the wee hours most nights, thinking and writing, which are moments, he describes as stimulating his risk-taking mind.

"Taking risk means something unconventional," he says.

"If I stick to old rules, I never break through."

While preferring to take risks in education, Botstein's respect for traditional pedagogy - he is especially concerned that students acquire at least some science training - may cast a restraining influence at Bard.

"I have a fair number of radical concerns and beliefs," he points out.

"It's just that I combine them with a healthy skeptical conservatism. I guess that's why I like being a college president."

chennan@chinadaily.com.cn