Boston universities are, in many ways, best known for their presidents, who take on almost legendary personalities as the subject of news articles, blogs (like this one!) and water-cooler gossip sessions; just look at Larry Summers.

Now Bob Brown, BU’s relatively new president, is beginning to take on a public persona of his own. A profile in today’s Globe about Brown (former provost of MIT) portrays him as a consultative kind of leader—a major contrast to the more autocratic president he replaced a year and a half ago, John Silber.

Brown wants to institute some major changes across the board at BU and has been seeking feedback from the BU community in some rather unconventional ways, like this public blog/forum for people to post on.

A similar sort of contrast will be apparent in a few months across the river at Harvard when Drew Gilpin will take the helm, replacing the equally controversial Larry Summers.

The Brown profile ends on a skeptical note, saying that while consulting students and faculty is a good idea, it’s not clear whether that will translate into significant changes in the near future for the university that faculty and staff will buy into. I imagine the same questions will arise at Harvard.

It will be interesting to watch these two rookie presidents over the coming years as they use a consensus-building approach to steer giant institutions in new directions. Will these gentler styles of leadership bring about the right kind of changes in a reasonable period of time?