Faculty Discuss Tight Budget at Monthly Meeting

At yesterday’s meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), professors confronted the administration about a range of issues, including Allston spending and retirement benefits for the Faculty’s oldest professors.

Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby presented key points of his annual letter to the Faculty, focusing on Allston construction, faculty appointments, academic planning and the curricular review.

He once again warned the Faculty that “at present, and in the coming years, we face certain challenges...and declining surpluses, potentially resulting in deficits,” even though “we have in this Faculty enviable resources at our disposal.”

Kirby pointed to Harvard’s need to make the best use of both unrestricted funds and monies earmarked for specific purposes. He also said the Faculty should remain “focused in our spending.”

It was this warning, coupled with his talk about the opportunities afforded Harvard by development in Allston, that worried Professor of the History of Science Everett I. Mendelsohn.

Mendelsohn expressed apprehension about “constriction that is occurring here while growth is happening elsewhere,” and said Allston spending may “starve” the FAS.

“The FAS is taxed of its endowment at the rate of some $40 million a year,” Mendelsohn said, referring to a yearly percentage the University takes from the endowment of each Harvard school. “That was a decision made for us...if one projects this out [over the 25 years the tax will be incurred], you’re talking about an amount well over a billion dollars.”

And it seems every cent of that amount is needed, University President Lawrence H. Summers said at the meeting.

When Gurney Professor of English Literature James Engell asked about the fate of any funds left over after the tax on the FAS endowment, Summers made it clear that there are no excess funds.

“The expenditures on Allston have exceeded the allotments from the endowment,” Summers said.

Engell said this may have come as a surprise to some professors.

“I can’t recall seeing a report of how money has been spent [on Allston],” Engell said. “I think I know more about this now than I did this morning.”

“I think from our point of view, we want to make sure that in our urge to build in Allston, we don’t find ourselves squeezing the day-to-day activities in the FAS,” Mendelsohn said after the meeting.

Faculty worries were not confined to the prospect of present and future belt-tightening. Mendelsohn also spoke about the need for more comprehensive health-care coverage for Faculty members who retire.

“The incentives for retirement are few, very few. The risks of retirement are great,” Mendelsohn said. He mentioned that the University had terminated certain health-care provisions, and worried that it might also do away with other benefits.

“We’re told that we can continue to use [University Health Services] facilities and that the University will fund MedEx or other plans,” Mendelsohn said. But, he continued, “There’s no indication that this too cannot be changed unilaterally if the costs get too high.”

Summers agreed that the need was an important one, especially at a time when the Faculty is aging markedly.

“The number of Faculty members over 70 now very much exceeds the number under 40,” he said. “The number of Faculty members over 60 now very much exceeds the number under 50. I’m particularly mindful of the point you made of seeing to benefits that are potentially subject to change. [Professors] should have some certainty regarding this retirement package.”

Jones Professor of American Studies Lizabeth Cohen also spoke about the need to make additional provisions to help support graduate students. As it stands now, she said, Harvard may be offering more to its graduate students than it can afford to promise.

“Although I applaud our commitment to offer all graduate students fully-funded, four-year packages, the way it seems to be playing out is that the funding for the last two years is coming from the teaching budget,” Cohen said. “If there are not teaching opportunities in a student’s field, it isn’t clear where this support is supposed to come from.”

Cohen also said she was worried that Harvard is no longer setting aside funds to ensure that talented

minority students can go to graduate school.

She said certain documentation usually placed in such candidates’ files is missing this year, and that this may indicate that the funding is no longer there.

“The message that my department got is that there’s no longer any funding available beyond the department quotas to support qualified [minority] candidates,” she said. “So departments may not have the same incentive to nominate minority applicants as they once had.”

But Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Peter T. Ellison said there was in fact no reason to fear the loss of this funding.

“We’re already bringing in more students than allocations would previously allow,” Ellison said. “We still give out those fellowships every year in greater numbers than we ever have.”

After that discussion, Dean of the Humanities Maria M. Tatar and Dean of the Physical Sciences and the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences Venkatesh Narayanamurti spoke about their observations and activities as divisional deans.

Tatar spoke about her goal of strengthening the arts at Harvard and helping them overcome their reputation of “fragmentation,” while Narayanamurti discussed his hopes of creating stronger ties between professors in his division and those in the physical sciences.

Also at the meeting, four new department chairs were named to serve for the three-year period beginning on July 1, 2004. Engell was named chair of the Department of English and American Language and Literature, Eric Rentschler will serve as chair of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Nancy L. Rosenblum will work as chair of the Department of Government and Andrew W. Murray will become chair of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology.

—Staff writer Joshua D. Gottlieb contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Laura L. Krug can be reached at krug@fas.harvard.edu.