Ehrenreich Sets Tone As First Ombudsperson

After 40 years of teaching about alternative fuel technologies, Clowes Research Professor Henry Ehrenreich has redirected his own energy to resolve Harvard’s internal disputes.

As the University’s first ombudsperson, Ehrenreich is one of two people employed by Harvard to serve as a neutral party who resolves disputes between faculty, students and staff.

Though he is not permitted to impose decisions or change policy, Ehrenreich can mediate informally and direct community members to resources already in place.

While the administration is heralding the benefits of the new post, others who have sought the assistance of the ombudsperson are not convinced of its effectiveness.

A Budding Post

The ombudsperson position was created a little more than a year ago, as a result of a recommendation by the December 2001 Katz Committee report on wage and labor issues and the April 2001 Mass. Hall takeover by the Progressive Students’ Labor Movement (PSLM).

“We were motivated by a general sense that faculty, students, and staff everywhere in the University would benefit from the availability of a neutral interlocutor,” writes University Provost Steven E. Hyman, who oversees the University Ombuds Office, in an e-mail.

This office consists of Ehrenreich and a professional arbiter, Lydia Cummings. They have handled approximately 150 cases since the office opened last February.

“Generally people have things they want to get off their chests and just want to discuss options available to them,” says Ehrenreich, who emphasizes the office’s confidentiality rules. “We have no power except to talk to people.”

No records are kept of conversations, and detailed information is shared with University officials only under the most “unusual” circumstances, according to Ehrenreich.

The office must also obtain the permission of the visitor before contacting anyone else about the case.

However, Ehrenreich says he does report to the provost about twice per semester with a general overview of the cases and a report of any developing trends.

“We haven’t had endemic problems, but if we did I’d walk over to the provost and tell him,” says Ehrenreich. “But we’d never tell him any names, only where the problems seem to sit.”

Ehrenreich says he wants the cream-colored leather sofas and fresh flowers in his Holyoke Center office to make people feel “as though they’re walking into someone’s living room.”

While Cummings deals mostly with workers’ disputes, Ehrenreich handles faculty and academic cases.

It's Academic

Since the office’s opening, Ehrenreich says he has handled such problems as complaints about being passed over for promotions, advising issues and conflicts over the authorship of academic papers.

But Ehrenreich says he has not yet dealt with conflicts over the awarding of tenure—a secretive and often-contentious issue at Harvard—though he has met with junior Faculty members who were denied promotions to non-tenured positions.

Other faculty problems stem from “personality conflicts” among department colleagues, Ehrenreich says.

“We see young Faculty members [who are] worried that a senior Faculty member isn’t sympathetic,” he says. “And I tell them to write a letter to the Faculty member and then tear it up and then see if they really want to send the letter. It allows them to delineate their arguments.”

He says that some of his cases involve graduate students who do not receive credit for the ideas that emerge from collaborations with Faculty members.

“It’s mostly a misunderstanding,” Ehrenreich says of the disputes. “Usually the problems are resolved by faculty giving credit. It’s rare that a Faculty member intentionally uses a graduate student’s ideas without giving proper acknowledgement.”

Ehrenreich says he has also dealt with seniors who are having difficulties with their thesis advisers and first-years who are unhappy with their academic advisers.

“Because we’re confidential,” he says, “someone can come in and complain about their adviser without him ever knowing.”

Ehrenreich credits the office with preventing lawsuits against the University by addressing conflicts before they escalate.

“We try very hard to keep disputes inside of Harvard rather than outside,” he says.

In one academic dispute, a junior law professor and a graduate student were “all ready to sue each other” over the authorship of an academic paper, according to Ehrenreich, before visiting the ombudsperson.

“I never heard anything again, so I think it has been resolved,” he says.

Questioning The Role

Despite Ehrenreich’s success stories, several workers have criticized the office’s undefined role and lack of power within in the University.

One Harvard employee, who spoke about his experience on the condition of anonymity, says he is “extremely disappointed” with the office’s services.

Last year, the employee received what he alleges was an “unfair” letter of reprimand from his supervisor, containing false accusations.

After appealing to the Office of Human Resources (OHR), he says he was advised to accept the letter and “move on.”

Unsatisfied with this outcome, the employee subsequently took the dispute to the Ombuds Office.

“I expected a neutral person to mediate, but my impression was that my particular unit at Harvard had already contacted [Cummings] and she already knew why I was there,” he says. “She repeated almost word for word what I was told by the OHR unit. I thought the whole point of the ombudsperson was an informal thing where they would mediate as an outsider.”

The employee says that he provided the Ombuds Office with documents supporting his claim before the meeting, but that Cummings had not read them.

“Rather than rescheduling a meeting at a later date so that the Ombuds Office would have time to read the documentation completely, I was given a patronizing lecture about ‘knowing my place’ and told to ‘mind my own business,’” he says. “I was then abruptly informed that the meeting was over.”

A Harvard Law School (HLS) professor became interested in the employee’s case and helped him obtain legal counsel, who then contacted the University. The letter of reprimand was eventually withdrawn.

“The time and money expended in this effort were substantial,” the employee adds. “It is my understanding that the Ombuds Office was created by President [Lawrence H. Summers] precisely to prevent this kind of waste of everyone’s time and money.”

Aaron Bartley, a union organizer with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 615, which represents many Harvard custodians, says that workers in his union are unclear about the kinds of problems that they should bring to the ombudsperson.

Other workers say that they don’t think that the Ombuds Office is as neutral as the University claims.

Thompson E. Potter Jr., a faculty secretary at HLS since 1986 and a member of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, says the ombudsperson is only “window dressing.”

“The fact that the custodians and other unionized workers are at this point demonstrating and having to publicly air their many grievances with Harvard management…clearly indicates that the University ombudsperson in practice and prospect is really at best merely University sidewalk superintendant,” writes Potter, who says he has not had any contact with the office, in an e-mail.

The Working World

Though Ehrenreich does not personally handle workers’ complaints and disputes—a job delegated to Cummings—one of the main reasons the position of ombudsperson was created was to resolve such conflicts.

And the vast majority—80 percent—of the Harvard affiliates who use the Ombuds Office are workers, according to Ehrenreich.

“Most often, it has to do with a relationship with a supervisor,” says Cummings. She says that there is a “wide range” of worker concerns, from working environment to career opportunities, to supervisors.

Cummings, who spent 25 years working in the University’s OHR before taking the post at the Ombuds Office, says that workers tend to have “more complex problems” than faculty, partly because there are fewer career alternatives for Faculty members.

“One of the options that may be attractive to [a worker] is to leave their job,” she says, adding that such a possibility is not always a choice for Faculty members.

Cummings says that workers are more likely than faculty or students to come back for follow-up visits.

At least half of the workers who come to the office return for one or more follow-up meetings, according to Cummings.

But when people visit the office in excess, Ehrenreich says, they must draw the line.

“We suggest they get some medical help. These are people who generally want to come back and talk and we’re not psychiatrists,” he says.

More To Be Done

To increase faculty, student and staff awareness of the office, Ehrenreich and Cummings have recently made presentations to the deans of all of the graduate schools and the College about the services they offer and have distributed 500 posters to various workplaces around campus.

But their caseload of 150 remains significantly lower than that of

Linda Wilcox, ombudsperson of Harvard’s School of Public Health, Medical School and Dental School, who says her office spoke with 625 people last year.

Wilcox’s office, which will continue to operate despite its new University counterpart, was established in 1991.

Ehrenreich says that the success of the Ombuds Office will ultimately depend on word of mouth.

Though Ehrenreich says he will remain at the office for at least a couple more years, he is still trying to determine the terms of service for the ombudsperson position and what types of University employees should be appointed to the top job.

“My aim right now is to make sure the right kind of people agree to serve for a term,” he says. “Prestige of the office depends on the fact that you’ve got a senior Faculty member in charge, which opens a lot of doors to deans and Mass. Hall.”

—Staff writer May Habib can be reached at habib@fas.harvard.edu.