What does it mean that the two American university presidents of the past seventy-five years who made the greatest impact on higher education policy were both labor economists? Nancy Weiss Malkiel does not address that question in her well-written biography of William G. Bowen, but she makes a strong case that Bowen succeeded fellow labor economist Clark Kerr in the role of chief statesman for and analyst of American higher education.

There are several similarities between the two leaders. Each grew up in modest circumstances and attended a selective liberal arts college (Swarthmore for Kerr, Denison for Bowen). Each began a lengthy tenure in campus leadership at a young age and concluded it while still in his fifties—Kerr as chancellor of UC Berkeley (1952-1958) and president of the University of California (1958-1967), Bowen as provost (1967-1972) and president (1972-1988) of Princeton University. Each moved immediately from his university presidency to a position of extra-university leadership with great influence on higher education—Kerr as head of the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education (1967-1973) and the Carnegie Council on Policy Studies in Higher Education (1973-1980), Bowen as president of the Mellon Foundation (1988-2006). Finally, Kerr and Bowen each wrote a number of acclaimed books on higher education, doing so right up to the end of his long life.

Kerr and Bowen were personally connected through Frederick Harbison, who was one of Kerr’s collaborators on the landmark study of worldwide economic development, Industrialism and Industrial Man (1960), at the same time he was one of Bowen’s teachers while the latter was in the economics doctoral program at Princeton. These scholars were among the earliest to make higher education a subject of economic analysis. Malkiel quotes a letter of recommendation Harbison wrote while Bowen was a graduate student: “At his stage of development, Bowen is the best student I have ever had the opportunity to teach” (p. 29). In another recommendation during Bowen’s first year on the Princeton faculty, Harbison wrote, “He will probably turn up as one of our leading university presidents in the next twenty years” (p. 31).

Malkiel provides compelling evidence for Bowen’s paramount position in American higher education. She details his institutional accomplishments at Princeton and Mellon, including the creation of the JSTOR digital library in the latter role. He had “an unusual ability to better the situations” of these institutions, but, she argues, “it was in his writing that Bowen had his most significant impact” (p. 386). An entire chapter on his writings, the book’s longest, supports this argument. She quotes The New York Times, Inside Higher Ed, and The Chronicle of Higher Education all opining after his death that his writings were his most significant legacy.

Perhaps Malkiel’s best insights on Bowen’s contributions to American life through his writings come through conveying the stories of Bowen’s impact on two Supreme Court decisions and of the making of The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions (1998), coauthored with former Harvard president Derek Bok. Malkiel tells the story of how Justice Lewis Powell came to quote Bowen in his famous opinion in the Regents of University of California v. Bakke case (1978). Powell spoke at Princeton in the fall of 1977. While on campus, he picked up a copy of Princeton Alumni Weekly, which included Bowen’s essay, “Admissions and the Relevance of Race.” Upon returning to Washington, Powell instructed his clerk to “work as many quotations … as possible” from Bowen’s piece into Powell’s opinion (p. 171). Years later, in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), the court cited The Shape of the River “in support of the proposition that admitting a racially diverse class served a compelling public interest” (p. 303).

Changing the Game has an extensive focus on Bowen’s qualities as a leader and thus would be a good fit for courses in higher education leadership. Indeed, Malkiel writes that the book is “about leadership: how vision, strategy, and sophistication about governance influence the direction of key institutions in American society” (p. xxi-xxii). To that end, she includes a chapter about Bowen’s service on corporate boards, with case studies of specific decisions he helped those corporations to make. She concludes that Bowen’s record shows how “careful control” by a leader, “painstakingly orchestrating every step,” can lead to strong results (p. 384).

One of the most important aspects of Bowen’s tenure at the helm of Princeton was his effort to move the university away from a Protestant Christian identity to a more inclusive one, with a particular interest in making Jewish students feel more welcome. He commenced this project soon after assuming the presidency in 1972 as the first holder of that office not to be a Presbyterian minister or the son of one. Bowen made changes to the president’s role in the university chapel. He ended the long-standing practices of the president being visible at the chapel’s weekly Sunday worship service and delivering the annual baccalaureate address. During some events, “the cross in the center of the nave was covered by a screen, with interfaith religious symbols displayed in front of it” (p. 178). Bowen endured protests of these actions from a group called Concerned Alumni of Princeton. Toward the end of his presidency, he raised funds to create a Center for Jewish Life, which opened during the tenure of his successor, Harold Shapiro, Princeton’s first Jewish president.

This book is probably too long. It appears to be a labor of love on a subject who was a friend and mentor to the author. She offers several touching anecdotes illustrating how Bowen regularly went to great lengths to help friends in need. Still, Malkiel does not hold back from negative assessments of Bowen in some areas. She names specific failures in his work and reports on his affair with an undergraduate student during the early years of his Princeton presidency. She provides vivid accounts of what some would call Bowen’s workaholic tendencies. The author’s acquaintance with the subject and his network facilitated her conduct of 230 oral history interviews. These form a valuable part of the book’s source base, alongside Bowen’s personal papers, to which the author gained access through Bowen’s wife. This extensive research contributes to making Malkiel’s biography of Bowen an important contribution to the history of American higher education.