In first novel, Stanford scholar explores challenges faced by college presidents
Tom Ehrlich, adjunct professor at Stanford Graduate School of Education, has served in six U.S. presidential administrations and been university president, provost, and dean at three public and private campuses across the country. As a legal and education scholar, he has written 14 non-fiction books and scores of articles.
Now at age 90, he’s taking on a decidedly different genre: fiction. “It’s a lot of fun,” Ehrlich said. “It’s liberating to be able to say, ‘What if?’”
The first of his two novels, so far, is The Search: An Insider’s Novel About a University President. While the book, which was published last summer, draws on his own experiences at Indiana University, where he was the 15th president, the story explores the timeless friction between athletics and academics and the ongoing debate around the value of higher education and who colleges serve.
His second novel, due to be published next fall, is a murder tale - not at a university, but at an independent living community like the one in Palo Alto, where he and his wife, Ellen, now live. “I’m a big believer in telling stories,” Ehrlich said, “and telling them in ways that reveal something about how we live and learn and engage with each other.”
In between those novels, Ehrlich’s memoir will be published in January 2025. Learn, Lead, Serve: A Civic Life provided Ehrlich with the opportunity to dive deeply into his own stories, from childhood to now, spotlighting his close-knit relationship with his father, and the work he and Ellen did in higher education, government, and nonprofit organizations.
The following interview was edited for length and clarity.
The Search follows the president of fictional Nebraska State University looking for a new football coach/athletic director after the beloved coach suddenly dies on the field at a big game. Why did you take this angle?
You write what you know. And the issue of academics over athletics was starting to roil again. I thought it would be interesting to weave this issue into a novel.
When I was at Indiana University, I was in very public disagreement with the combative basketball coach Bob Knight. I received 10,000 letters about how I was handling or mishandling the situation. One I kept in my office and looked at whenever my head was getting a little swelled. “Mr. President, I’m 84 years old. I’m in a wheelchair. I live for Indiana University basketball. You can take your goddamn bow ties and go back where you belong.”
I was hired at Indiana to strengthen academics while also understanding the role and power of the athletics program. In my novel, the protagonist, Charlie Rosen, was hired at Nebraska State - a fictional school - to do the same.
I tried to give a sense of what it felt like to be president when you were trying to grapple with so many constituencies in a public university. A public university is the “main street” of American higher education, and I wanted to be on that street.
Stanford GSE Adjust Professor Tom Ehrlich (Photo courtesy of Tom Ehrlich)
College presidents are facing many tough issues these days. Given what you know and experienced, would you encourage someone to go into that role?
Yes! Presidents are facing tough issues, but they’ve always faced tough issues. When I was provost at the University of Pennsylvania, for example, there were frequent sit-ins in my office.
The job is challenging but I enjoyed the chance to strengthen the university. What a wonderful opportunity it was! I like academic planning. To work on what I call “institutional architecture” – making a great university even better – was a privilege. I tried to help strengthen the ways in which students learned, and faculty taught and did research. It’s a challenge to be a university president, but one that comes with a lot of joys as well.
This was your first novel. How did that compare to writing academic papers or nonfiction?
Novels must be interesting and entertaining. I took a creative writing course at Stanford. I liked it so much that I took two more! There were challenges. I’m used to writing in paragraphs, and people don’t talk in paragraphs so creating dialogue was a challenge. The other big challenge was including many details. You want to know that someone is wearing a pale green shirt and white pants. All those things that make your character a human being in a novel, you don’t worry about in academic pieces. In fact, you might lose points in an academic paper if you put those in! There were many other lessons I learned in my creative writing courses. I had great teachers, and their courses helped.
Your memoir is called Learn, Lead, Serve: A Civic Life. Is that how you’d describe your life?
My editor chose the title, but yes, I really have enjoyed learning, leading institutions, and serving the public interest. And I enjoy teaching. Every year I was a dean, provost, and president, I taught at least one course. I had never taught when I walked into my first course teaching contracts at Stanford Law School. Initially I could not understand why students found some concepts so difficult, while I found them so simple. Finally, I asked a friend to video several classes, and by studying the videos I began to see where my students weren’t getting the concepts. I learned how to identify and unpack roadblocks and meet students where they were having problems. When I joined the Stanford Graduate School of Education faculty, that experience led me to teach the course, “Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.” I still believe that doctoral students who are planning to become faculty members should take at least one course that will help them be better teachers.
The memoir focuses on my time in the federal government, as well as my years at Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania, and Indiana University. In meeting the leadership challenges on those campuses, I tried hard to connect what I learned in one position to do a better job in the next position. I also had great satisfaction working in the federal government – in the State Department when JFK and then LBJ were presidents, as the first president of the Legal Services Corporation, which funds legal aid for poor people, and working directly for President Carter in charge of bilateral and multilateral foreign aid policies. These experiences have made my primary other roles in higher education ones that help prepare college students with the knowledge, skills and attributes to be actively engaged in civic work. It concerns me that so few young people today are interested in public service. Our country suffers as a result.
What is next for you?
I’ve entered a new chapter, so to speak. I’m still a GSE adjunct professor, helping whenever I am asked and advising students, and I hope to remain in that role as long as I am vertical. I am grateful to the school, its faculty and administrators for giving me the chance to be their colleague. Now I also volunteer at a number of community organizations. One, for example, helps immigrants improve their English.
Will there be another novel? I doubt it—but one never knows.
Faculty mentioned in this article: Thomas Ehrlich
