Shady Dealings

The headline in The Harvard Gazette, the University's propaganda organ, put it euphemistically: "Museum Staff to Be Restructured." The staff of Harvard's Semitic Museum wasn't "restructured"--it was fired.

The drastic decision initially looked like a courageous example of fiscal responsibility. One could argue that, in response to the museum's seven-year cumulative deficit of $1 million, Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles properly chose to cut the staff while emphasizing the museum's academic functions rather than its public ones. But $1 million over 7 years is chump change for a University about to launch a $2 billion fund drive--a University that spent more than $100,000 on a sign for the Shops By Harvard Yard.

But as more facts have emerged about the struggle over the museum, it has become clear that Knowles' decision to sack the museum's 10-member staff--a decision presumably sanctioned by President Neil L. Rudenstine--was not a tough-minded act of courage, but a misguided act of cowardice in the face of a tenured professor's power play. As Lecturer on Social Studies Martin H. Peretz, who has served on several museum committees, wrote on this page last week, "This is an ugly story."

In part, the museum's staff and visitors are victims of a review committee that Knowles stacked against them from the beginning. The committee included Near Eastern Languages and Civilization (NELC) faculty members and (surprise) it ended up suggesting that the museum be restructured to better serve NELC professors and graduate students. The directors of two other Harvard museums, the Fogg and the Peabody, were also on the review committee, and the committee recommended that portions of the collections of the Semitic Museum be transferred to (surprise) the Fogg and Peabody museums. The public, the undergraduate student body and the staff of the museum were not represented on the committee and, for a final surprise, those are the constituencies the report helps not at all.

Imagine if Harvard, faced with a deficit, set up a committee consisting of Harvard faculty members and the presidents of Yale and Princeton--and the committee recommended firing all the staff, dismissing the students, and dividing the library books between Yale and Princeton. It's unthinkable.

The museum is also the victim of a director who demonstrated no desire to see the museum survive in its present form. Dorot Professor of Archaeology of Israel Lawrence E. Stager '65, who led the review committee, showed little interest in the museum's activities beyond his own narrow field of Biblical archaeology. Stager wants to direct the museum's resources solely toward his own academic pursuits at the expense of the rest of the museum. He also completely neglected fundraising, according to eight museum staff members and according to Peretz, a financial contributor.

Fundraising and the deficit are at the heart of the decision to "restructure" the Semitic Museum. If there were truly no money to be found, then Knowles made the necessary, tough choice to cut costs. But the evidence strongly suggests that financial support for the museum is available--Knowles and Stager just aren't interested in pursuing it. In fact, they refused to fundraise for the museum over the last year, and prohibited the museum staff from pursuing donations. Stager went to the absurd length of having his secretary dismantle a fax machine to make sure that his employees hadn't engaged in forbidden fundraising.

Peretz says the museum could receive a $1.5 million gift from a private foundation. "There are other pockets, and deep ones, too," he wrote.

The Semitic Museum has served the valuable function of bringing attention to the Middle East and to Arab and Israeli culture, important subjects for which scholarship and public education can make a real difference.

Rather than "restructuring" the museum, Harvard should revitalize it by raising money, keeping the staff and seeking new exhibitions that attract students, faculty and the wider community to this unique and valuable resource.