New Era for Stanford Seen Under Casper : Education: He is received as a forceful and witty leader who can help ease the university past its controversy over federal research billing.

STANFORD —  If critics hoped that Stanford University’s next president would promise a quick and far-reaching shake-up at the beleaguered campus, they probably were disappointed Wednesday with the selection of Gerhard Casper, a constitutional law expert who is the provost at the University of Chicago.

On the other hand, Casper may be just the person if Stanford sought a forceful and witty spokesman for higher education who could help ease the world-renowned university past its ongoing controversy over federal research billing.

“I do not think anyone in the country thinks Stanford is a less good institution than it was two years ago,” Casper said Wednesday, referring to the allegations of research spending abuses that arose in 1990. “But can it be a better one? Of course it can.”

Casper, 54, was introduced at a press conference as the ninth president of the 101-year old school, succeeding Donald Kennedy on Sept. 1. In response to questions about the overbillings for such indirect costs of research as libraries and maintenance, Casper conceded that Stanford, Chicago and other universities made mistakes, although he maintains in dollar amounts much less than the government alleges. Federal investigators contend the University of Chicago has overcharged about $1 million in research overhead costs, a small fraction of the $300 million they allege Stanford wrongly billed in the past decade.

The No. 2 man at the Chicago school since 1989 and a former dean of its law school, the German-born Casper strongly warned that any attempt to use the controversy to end federal support for such research expenses would be harmful to the nation.

“I think the United States would be very poorly served if it abandoned this approach to the support of university infrastructure too quickly or because accounting has been less than perfect,” he said. But Casper also stressed that universities must better justify how they spend their monies and why they raise tuition bills. With room and board, the cost of a Stanford education is about $22,800 annually.

Although he offered no specifics, Casper suggested that his first task would be to help improve undergraduate education at Stanford, a difficult job given the research emphasis of so many professors. In teaching undergraduates, the school does “a pretty good job,” he said, adding, “there’s always a tremendous amount of room for improvement.” As Chicago provost, he helped found a council to improve the training of teaching assistants.

Privately, some trustees and Stanford officials said that an outsider was viewed as being better able to give the school a fresh start after the research spending furor that led to Kennedy’s decision to resign after 12 years as president.

However, Condoleezza Rice, a search panel member and a Stanford political science professor, denied that Casper’s outsider status was crucial. “I think if this person had emerged from the inside, he would have been chosen,” she said, adding that she was most impressed by Casper’s ability to speak persuasively about education.

History professor James Sheehan, vice chairman of the search committee, said Casper’s managerial experience at Chicago was important. “We were looking for someone who could handle an institution as complex as this,” Sheehan said.

Like Stanford, Chicago is a private school with many divisions, including a medical school and hospital. Stanford has 13,549 students while Chicago has 11,100, with graduate students outnumbering undergraduates at both campuses.

Mainly as a result of a drop in federal research support, Stanford recently enacted $43 million in budget cuts, a 12% decline in annual spending, not including its hospital’s budget. At Chicago, Casper has had recent experience with belt-tightening. Casper and University of Chicago’s president Hanna Gray instituted a one-year hiring freeze to help close a $2.5 million deficit. Officials there praised his handling of the unpopular move.

Now a naturalized U.S. citizen, the handsome, silver-haired Casper, whose German accent is still evident, studied law at the universities of Hamburg and Freiburg in Germany and has a doctorate from Freiburg. He also earned a master’s degree in law from Yale University in 1962 and taught political science and law at UC Berkeley in the mid-1960s and then at Chicago, starting in 1966.

The formal presentation of Casper on Wednesday had its emotional moments, particularly when the crowd of teachers, students and reporters gave a lengthy round of applause to Kennedy. The outgoing president seemed close to tears, as did some of his allies.

Officials refused to reveal Casper’s salary or other details of his contract. But his pay is thought to be somewhat higher than the $230,000 that Kennedy earned, according to tax records, in 1990.

Casper’s wife, Regina, is a psychiatrist and professor at the University of Chicago and an expert on eating disorders. Stanford officials said they expected that a position would be found for her at the California school. The Caspers have a daughter who is a law student at the University of Virginia.

In January, Casper announced his intention to step down as Chicago’s provost at the end of the current academic year to return to the university’s law faculty. He had been considered a leading contender to succeed Gray and there have been some hints of conflict between the two. Casper also was mentioned as an unsuccessful finalist for the presidency of Harvard University last year.

The University of Chicago is regarded in many academic circles as a bastion of conservative economic and political thought. Casper’s supporters said he brought a more moderate-to-liberal profile to the law school when he was dean for eight years.

His political views will be watched closely at Stanford, which has been torn by ideological schisms. Kennedy was reviled by some conservatives for his support of adding non-Western material to a required humanities course for freshmen. A proposal to build Ronald Reagan’s presidential library on campus was killed amid much bickering and the library was eventually constructed in Simi Valley.

At the University of Chicago, colleagues mourned Casper’s departure and praised his abilities as a scholar and administrator.

“The sense here is one of great sadness and great loss,” said University of Chicago professor Frank Richter, head of the school’s faculty organization. “He’s thought of very, very highly . . . very much loved. Stanford is awfully damn lucky to have gotten him.”

Gray issued a statement lauding Casper’s “wisdom and vision, his fine sense of academic values and standards, his collegial and effective guidance.

“I know of no one better prepared to be a first-rate leader and spokesman, not only for Stanford University, but for higher education in this country,” Gray said. “It is a splendid choice.”

As dean of the university’s highly regarded law school, Casper was credited with attracting a top-flight faculty and raising more than $20 million to expand facilities.

“He was extraordinarily successful,” said Geoffrey Stone, who succeeded Casper as law school dean three years ago. “There’s a strong sense of mission, of collegiality, that’s a direct result of Casper’s influence.”

The hallmark of Casper’s style was his open-minded, collegial approach and his reverence for scholarly endeavors, his colleagues said.

“He’s a very bright man and a very good listener,” Richter said. “By virtue of his personality, he’s been able to build bridges” between diverse elements of the university community.

His University of Chicago supporters, alluding to the research overbilling controversy, said they are confident Casper will rise to the challenge at Stanford.

“He’ll restore the sense of integrity,” at Stanford, law professor Norval Morris said. “He comes with the highest reputation for competence. He’s excellent at shaping consensus and forming relationships with people who are successful in the community.”

Contributing to this story was Times staff writer Charisse Jones.