The UB professor and former SUNY chancellor said the public university system has been hampered by the "extraordinary intrusiveness" of a state government that is unwilling to grant much independence.

Also, New York politicians are suspicious of academics, and see SUNY more as a burden than as an asset, he said.

Despite its high taxes, Johnstone said, New York spends less per capita on its public universities and colleges than almost any other state. He considered this a reason for hope that the state could be persuaded to spend more on SUNY.

"I'm tremendously proud of SUNY for overcoming all these restrictions," Johnstone said at the Center for Tomorrow in his "UB at Sunrise" breakfast talk. "I am proud to have played a small role in (UB's) maturation, and even prouder now to be one of its professors."

Johnstone found plenty of other reasons for pride in his discussion of the history of American research universities, which he called the best in the world. In their early years, he said, American institutions adopted the best attributes of their European predecessors-the nurturing environment of the British residential college and the scholarship of the German university. They mixed those traits with the community orientation of the local American college.

American institutions rejected the European model of a faculty dominated by powerful senior professors in favor of academic departments with elected, temporary chairmen, Johnstone said. The new system encouraged freedom and intellectual cross-fertilization.

New York was late in establishing its own public university system. The state gave the federal "land-grant" money it received in the 19th century to the private Cornell University instead of founding a state university. Later, the state's private colleges opposed attempts to found public universities that might become competitors. When New York did found SUNY, it chose a series of sites across the state instead of a single, dominating campus.

Now, SUNY is facing new concerns, including what Johnstone called the "inevitable conflict" between research and undergraduate teaching, and the tension between high standards and the need to make education accessible to the public. There is also a conflict between the need for greater professional accountability and the fact that researchers need independence to be productive and creative, he added.

Money, of course, will continue to be a problem, with government trying to decide what kind of research to support with public funds.

While the conservatives in power at the state and national levels are generally hostile to the public sector, Johnstone said, public universities can win conservative support if they show they are high quality-adaptive, entrepreneurial, open and accountable.

"SUNY at Buffalo can be all of that," he said. "I'm optimistic about the future of the American research university, public and private." Johnstone, a professor in UB's Graduate School of Education, was president of Buffalo State College for eight years and SUNY chancellor for nearly six. He resigned as chancellor in 1994 due to illness.