 He also instituted a vigorous program of illustrious visitorships, usually during the summer sessions, which in the fifteen years of his tenure featured John Berryman, Jorge Luis Borges, Basil Bunting, Anthony Burgess, Kenneth Burke, Noam Chomsky, Leonard Cohen, Robert Duncan, Richard Ellman, William Empson, Henri Foucault, Robert Graves, John Hawkes, Roman Jakobson, Randall Jarrell, Hugh Kenner, Frank Kermode, Doris Lessing, Dwight Macdonald, Norman Mailer, Howard Nemerov, Frank O’Hara, John Crowe Ransom, Adrienne Rich, Louis Simpson, Tzvetan Todorov, John Updike, Richard Wilbur, Evgeny Yevtushenko and many others.When a more conservative University administration took over (and the budget began to be squeezed) he continued to give generous support to academically adventurous initiatives that benefited a younger generation of faculty and graduate students destined for distinguished later careers (Robert Hass, John Coetzee, Charles Baxter, Marc Schell, Carol Jacobs, Gerald O'Grady).His reformation of the Buffalo English Department was viewed by many as the single greatest achievement of his career.