Lewis Forced Out

Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 has been forced out after almost eight years in the post.

While Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby announced earlier today that Lewis will step down in July as part of an effort to reorganize the College’s administration, Lewis said the move comes as a surprise.

“I learned in the past two weeks that the Dean of the Faculty had decided to reorganize,” Lewis said. “That was unexpected.”

“I had hoped to stay until the quadricentennial, but things don’t work out as you hoped,” Lewis quipped.

Kirby said the change is part of an administrative reshuffling that aims to integrate the Office of the Dean of Harvard College—which oversees the student experience outside the classroom—and the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Education, headed by Benedict H. “Dick” Gross ’71.

“This possibility has been studied for a number of years,” Kirby said in an interview this afternoon. “It will make the artificial connection between academic and non-academic matters better.”

“The current division of responsibility between the offices...separates functions that are better united,” Kirby said in a press release. “We will be consulting broadly with students, faculty and staff as we proceed.”

Kirby said the potential reorganization has been on his mind since soon after he arrived as dean last summer.

But his plan to act on the idea was not public knowledge until today.

Robert P. Kirshner, Quincy House master and a member of the Faculty Council, said he heard of Lewis’ impending departure only last night.

“There was no hint that he was going to be leaving,” Kirshner said.

Department chairs were informed of the restructuring this morning.

The move, Kirby said, makes sense in the context of the ongoing review of the undergraduate curriculum.

A committee, headed by Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Nancy Maull, will hammer out the details of the merger of Gross and Lewis’ offices.

Gross, who was appointed by Kirby only last summer, said today that he will remain as a leader of the ongoing curricular review. He said he is unsure whether he will assume a new combined deanship.

Lewis, on the other hand, is out.

He said that he has some thinking to do about his future, but he will continue teaching next fall—now with the title of Harvard College Professor.

Lewis would not comment directly on the reasons behind his departure.

Lewis, who was appointed to the College’s top position in 1995 by then-Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles, represented the old guard in a very new administration.

University President Lawrence H. Summers has taken an active interest in the College since he arrived as president a year-and-a-half ago. He appointed Kirby, and has pushed forward a broad-based review of the curriculum.

And according to some colleagues, Lewis and Summers have sparred at times—“partly style and partly substance,” one said.

In an interview, Summers said it was Kirby’s decision to create a single position in charge of both academics and student life.

Summers praised Lewis’ service to the College.

“Dean Lewis has done a great deal for the College during his deanship,” he said.

While professors and College administrators hesitated to criticize the move, many said they were dismayed to see Lewis go.

“I just think that this is very sad news for the College and for the interests of students,” Dean of Freshmen Elizabeth Studley Nathans said. “Dean Lewis has made immense contributions and important contributions and it’s always very sad when someone who has done as much as he has leaves a position.”

Lewis entered his deanship on the heels of co-authoring the controversial “Report on the Structure of Harvard College.”

Among other prescriptions, the report advocated randomization of the Houses, a move which Lewis pushed through in his first stormy years in office.

During his tenure, Lewis oversaw significant reorganization within his office and emphasized the need to improve undergraduate advising.

In recent years he has grappled with tight budgets and a space crunch that hit extracurricular activities on campus hard.

Kirby said that he hopes to complete the reorganization by the end of the semester.