Hoover Director Holds Out on Retirement

SAN FRANCISCO — Hoover Institution Director W. Glenn Campbell said Wednesday that he has changed his mind and will retire next year, but only if Stanford University meets several conditions that could give him continued influence at the think tank.

“It is not a question of if I retire; it is only a question of when,” said Campbell, who has run the institution for nearly 30 years and helped boost a $2-million endowment to one of more than $110 million.

But Campbell, 64, also said he will have a say in selecting his successor, and he expects to gain the title of “counselor,” while still helping to raise funds and select fellows at the institution.

In addition to keeping his office on the Palo Alto campus, Campbell wants a raise in his salary--now $106,000 a year--and “some sizable bonus for good work or good behavior, I’m not sure which.” He also anticipates parking privileges and a car and driver.

“If these terms aren’t met, I still won’t go quietly,” said Campbell, whose relationship with the university often has been bitter.

James Gaither, president of Stanford’s Board of Trustees, declined to discuss details of negotiations with Campbell but said he expects a favorable outcome.

Campbell said in a telephone interview that he wants his successor to be “someone with the toughness of Margaret Thatcher and the charm and charisma of Ronald Reagan, a person who is a true leader and knows how to leave all the . . . fellows alone but still make the whole mechanism work.”

The combative Campbell had said repeatedly in recent months that he would remain as director for at least another five years, even though the Board of Trustees told him in May that he was expected to retire when he turned 65 next April. The trustees had offered him an array of financial inducements and titles if he would leave at the customary retirement age.

“I am confident that they will sweeten it,” Campbell said of the trustees’ original offer, which would have left him with the title of director emeritus, a “generous salary with annual increases,” and health and travel benefits. He has complained that the university has held down his salary in an effort to force him out.

Although the Hoover Institution is a part of Stanford and is on its campus, the university has virtually no say over Campbell’s selection of fellows at the institution. The unusual relationship has led to such friction between Campbell and Stanford President Donald Kennedy that the two are said to communicate only by memo.

Economist Martin Anderson, a former adviser to President Reagan, is on the 10-member search committee, as are six other Hoover fellows and overseers of the institution. Kennedy selected three members of the search committee, including Warren M. Christopher, a Los Angeles attorney and Stanford trustee who served as deputy secretary of state in President Jimmy Carter’s Administration.

“I’m confident that Dr. Kennedy has several names in mind. I’m also confident that none of them will be acceptable. His list and my list will be two quite different lists,” Campbell said.

Campbell would not reveal names of potential successors, except to say that he has considered one Democrat and one Republican. He said the decision will be made by himself, Hoover’s scholars and Board of Overseers, and Stanford’s Board of Trustees, but not the university’s faculty, with whom Campbell has clashed.

“Ideology should not be a consideration,” Christopher said. “The important thing is to get the most qualified, distinguished person we can.”

“We can attract an absolutely first-rate director who will be more than acceptable and welcomed by all the interested parties,” Gaither said.

He said “nothing is being imposed on a new director” as a result of the arrangement. He added that “no one person will dominate the search” for Campbell’s successor.

“New generations of leaders do emerge. I believe there will be a new director and that new director is the one who will provide the leadership,” Gaither said.

“This is a resignation from office, but not a resignation from power,” said John Manley, a professor of political science and a critic of the Hoover Institution and Campbell.

“It’s beginning to look like Stanford is being held in bondage by conservative donors . . . and that is the danger in allowing Campbell to set conditions on his resignation. It means that there will be no real change.”

Manley and other Stanford faculty members have criticized Campbell for his involvement in conservative politics and for selecting as fellows scholars and leaders who are active in Republican circles.

More than 50 past or present Hoover fellows have served as advisers to President Reagan. Most recently, Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III accepted a part-time post at the institution. Secretary of State George P. Shultz also will be a part-time fellow.

Campbell, a member of President Reagan’s original “kitchen cabinet,” heads the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board and is on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

If he retires next year, he will have directed the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace for 30 years. Campbell was hand-picked by President Herbert Hoover, after whom the think tank is named, and occupies the late President’s office in Hoover Tower, the most noticeable landmark on the Stanford campus.

“It’s about time that I spent a little more time with my family . . . and in my waterfront condo in Maui,” he said, adding that he hopes to write a book.