Ten Months Later, Rupp Has New Position, New Outlook

On visiting George Rupp's office in midtown Manhattan, it takes a moment to figure out what is different about the man who less than a year ago was president of Columbia University.

It is not his appearance; as tall and thin as ever, Rupp looks the same as the day he walked off Columbia's campus. Nor is it his personality; friendly and charismatic, but always with a hint of sarcasm, this is the same Rupp who charmed his staff at Columbia, and whose off-the-cuff remarks got him into trouble more than once while he was here. Even the title is the same; on July 1, 2002, the day after he officially stepped down at the University, Rupp became president of the International Rescue Commission, a New York-based non-governmental organization that helps refugees across the globe.

But as Rupp, his tie loosened, his top button undone, begins to discuss his new career, it is clear that something is different. He is more animated, he smiles more broadly, and despite a lingering cold, the bags under his eyes--so pronounced in his final years at Columbia--are all but gone. The difference is too pronounced to miss: George Rupp is happy.

"I just find it an extremely interesting, stimulating, exciting operation," Rupp said last week. "What I find exciting about the place is that it's got extremely able people who are deeply committed to what they're doing."

Rupp's new office is smaller than his last one, but it is also brighter and more relaxed than the massive, mahogany paneled corner office he inhabited in Low Library. A large world map hangs on the wall beside his desk, and pieces of red yarn, held by tacks, stretch from the map's border to each of the 28 countries where the IRC operates. Around the edge of the map, smiling children look out from photographs of the refugee families the IRC has helped.

Rupp sits at a small round table on one side of the room and leans back in his chair--something he could not do in the formal, leather-covered seats in Low--as he talks animatedly about his work.

The IRC, he explains, was found the IRC would be greater than ever.

"I think that founding generation thought 'well, when World War II is over, we can go out of business,'" Rupp said. "No one could have imagined that the production of refugees and displaced people would have become such a growth industry, and it really has."

There are some 35 million refugees and internally displaced people in the world today, spread across dozens of nations from the Balkans to Africa to Asia. Since July, Rupp has visited 11 countries where the IRC operates, a list that includes the Democratic Republic of Congo, Thailand, Bosnia, and Afghanistan, where he was working when his successor at Columbia, University President Lee Bollinger, gave his inaugural address.

The job is quite a change, Rupp noted with a smile, for a man who has spent much of his adult life traveling to great capitals of art and culture. But Rupp seems to relish his new role. He spoke of visiting Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the IRC has worked for 25 years, and seeing the difference his organization has made.
"People were proud," Rupp said. "They'd point to an orchard and say, 'the IRC gave us the seedlings to plant that orchard 10 years ago.'"

Even when he is back in the IRC's home office on East 42nd Street, Rupp is engaged by his work.

"I find it intellectually fascinating to try to figure out how to deal with very complicated problems," Rupp said, "but also satisfying that because of what this organization is doing every single day, there are tens of thousands of people who are marginally better off than they might otherwise be, and it seems to me that's worth doing."

When he decided to resign from Columbia, Rupp said, he had no idea what he would do next. One possibility from early on was to return to being a professor, but Rupp said he was always looking for another opportunity.

"I figured I had one career left," Rupp said. "It's not that I would have minded staying at Columbia as a professor, but I always felt if something really exciting and different came along, I certainly would very seriously consider it, and it turned out something really interesting came along, and I've not been sorry at all."

In fact, to those who know Rupp well, his new career is hardly surprising. Rupp has always had a social conscience, from his involvement in anti-war and civil rights demonstrations in the 1960s to his days as a professor and then dean of Harvard's divinity school. The developing world has been a central concern of his for years, and even at Columbia he managed to discuss the issue, such as in his 2001 commencement address, when he focused on the United States' small budget for foreign aid. His 10 months at the IRC, Rupp said, have only reinforced his belief that the developed world--and especially the U.S.--needs to do more.

"The growing disparity in income and in wealth between the developed world and the developing world is just an enormous challenge for humanity," Rupp said. "I think it is an indefensible state of affairs that the gap is as wide as it is, but it's surely indefensible that it's getting worse and worse."

Rupp's liberal political leanings were never a secret at Columbia, but they are out in the open now. In a recent op-ed piece in The Washington Post that Rupp co-wrote with Kenneth Bacon, the president of Refugees International, he accused the Bush administration of failing to prepare adequately for the humanitarian crisis that is almost certain to follow the war in Iraq. Last week, Rupp said the situation was getting worse, not better.

"We've been trying for six months to convince the U.S. government that they are not prepared," Rupp said, "and they have been very confident that they were prepared, but their confidence was based on a number of assumptions that have already been proven false."

Rupp expressed frustration that the administration has not allowed the IRC or other organizations to set up camps in Iraq before the war began.

"We were worried that the situation might require preparation that hasn't been done; I think now it clearly is the case that it requires preparation that wasn't done," Rupp said. "If they had let us go into northern Iraq, at least we would have a base there, we would have trained Iraqi national staff ... and we'd be able to be much more helpful than we're going to be able to be now."

But behind Rupp's frustration lies an obvious enthusiasm for his work.

"I think you can see it's an engaging set of issues," Rupp said.
Perhaps the surest sign that Rupp is happy is that he has hardly been back to his old Morningside Heights stomping grounds.

Rupp said he has been on campus for official events just three times since he left, one of them to receive the Alexander Hamilton medal last fall. And though he says that he has "responded when asked" for advice--something he says has happened just a handful of times since July--Rupp said he had made a point of staying away from Columbia to try to let his successor take over completely.

"I don't think it's helpful for the former president to be kind of hanging around," Rupp said.

And though he says he misses Columbia, Rupp gives the strong impression that he does not want to be hanging around.

Animated, engaged, and looking younger than his 60 years, Rupp has found himself again in a new career. George Rupp, who so often in his last year at Columbia looked like he could not wait to leave, is happy.