Chairs Seek Growing Influence in FAS

A group of department and committee chairs that first met last February in response to growing dissatisfaction with University President Lawrence H. Summers’ leadership has continued to meet behind closed doors this fall, seeking to establish itself as a prominent force in the governance of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), according to minutes of some of the group’s meetings that were obtained by The Crimson.

The informal minutes of six meetings of the chairs, held between Sept. 15 and Nov. 10, reveal that the group has evolved into an influential body that continues to harbor strong discontent with how the Faculty is governed, and is attempting to use its growing clout to affect change by operating independent of the administration.

The minutes provide a detailed look at the goals and methods of the group of approximately 25 chairs, now known as the Caucus of Chairs, including its efforts to influence the Harvard College Curricular Review and to push for long-term plans for Faculty hiring.

The chairs are looking to “push-back” on Summers’ leadership style, the minutes show, and to compel Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby to be more transparent and inclusive of departments in his decision-making.

They have established four working groups within the Caucus­ to address their major concerns—governance, the curricular review, the capital campaign, and the need for more long-term planning, particularly with regards to faculty hiring.

The minutes also reveal sharp disapproval of the perceived bureaucratization of the FAS and University administrations. In several meetings, chairs pointed to new mid-level administrative positions as adding an unnecessary degree of separation between departments and top decision-makers.

The source of the minutes asked to remain anonymous because the minutes were not intended to be made public.

Each of the documents provides a two-to-three page summary of what was said and decided at each meeting, without attributing comments to individual professors. The minutes were each written by a different chair and then distributed to the others by the Caucus’ coordinator, Romance Languages and Literatures Department Chair Christie McDonald. They are technically unofficial minutes because they were not approved by all professors present at each meeting.

One Caucus member, Classics Department Chair Richard F. Thomas, confirmed the authenticity of the minutes obtained by The Crimson. He added that they were “very informal,” not intended for public distribution, and did not necessarily represent the views of the entire Caucus.

McDonald said that she was disappointed that the minutes had been distributed outside the Caucus.

“It is difficult to operate in a climate where information from internal sessions and memos are circulated beyond the chairs,” she said.

“Nevertheless,” she added, “colleagues remain focused on the major issues facing the faculty.”

With Summers and Kirby politically weakened after the maelstrom of this past spring, the Caucus has taken steps toward becoming a strong voice in Faculty affairs.

And the Caucus is aware of its rising influence. According to the minutes of the group’s Sept. 29 meeting, Summers requested to meet with the Caucus, a move that some group members saw as “an attempt [by Summers] to re-legitimize his presidency.”

The Caucus turned down that invitation at the time so that it could first further “identify what we want changed and accomplished,” according to the minutes. But the chairs nonetheless interpreted the president’s request as a nod to their rising influence on both Summers’ office in Massachusetts Hall and the Faculty administration run by Kirby across the Yard in University Hall.

“In light of this,” the minutes read, “the FAS chairs group recognizes that it has ‘rocked the boat’ and is empowered to influence Mass Hall, as well as Univ. Hall.”

Summers did not respond to requests for comment on his views on the Caucus, but Kirby expressed his support for the group in an e-mail yesterday.

“That chairs of a group of departments and programs think enough of their work and enough of the larger issues before the Faculty to meet informally is, in my view, a good thing,” Kirby wrote.

GROWING CLOUT

Last spring, the Caucus existed largely as a defensive organization aimed at limiting Summers’ allegedly heavy-handed governance of FAS affairs.

“Since we don’t have any say in the matter [of whether a president stays or goes]...what we have to do is ensure that operations that are most important to us are buffered as much as possible from incursion,” then-Acting Chair of the Folklore and Mythology Committee Jan Ziolkowski, who served as the group’s coordinator last semester, told The Crimson in June.

But the meeting notes from this semester indicate that while the group is continuing its push for more transparency by top administrators, it has also begun to develop specific positions on various issues including the curricular review, faculty hiring, and the capital campaign.

According to the minutes from the group’s first meeting of this semester on Sept. 15, “It was urged that we not fall into a disproportionate emphasis on transparency, etc. at the expense of positive proposals for structural change.”

The minutes from an Oct. 27 meeting show that the Caucus hopes to achieve its goals through existing structures rather than through channels of its own creation: “Specific proposals that are developed in the full meetings can have two outputs: 1. To the faculty council 2. Straight to the full faculty.”

But the minutes also show a reluctance by the Caucus to meet with Summers or Kirby before extensive internal discussion.

“There was a cautionary note that meetings with either [Summers] or [Kirby] might not yet be in the best interests of the group as it might be read as an accommodation and that it still might be best to keep our own council,” read the minutes for the Oct. 6 meeting.

McDonald said yesterday that the Caucus met with Kirby and Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 at its Nov. 10 meeting to discuss the curricular review (see sidebar), and that it plans to meet with Kirby again in January.

McDonald said that the Caucus has yet to meet with Summers, though she expects the group will invite him to one of its meetings before the end of the academic year.

“We wished to first deal with the curriculum review and then to prepare substantive issues to discuss with him,” she said.

Minutes from the Sept. 29 and Oct. 6 meetings reveal that Summers repeatedly requested to meet with the Caucus, but that the group steadfastly declined.

“It was stated to [Summers] on all occasions that when there is something substantive to be presented to [him] that such an invitation might be forthcoming,” the Oct. 6 minutes read.

The Caucus has, however, had written correspondence with Summers and Kirby, having sent at least one official letter to both outlining the general issues they are addressing.

BROKEN FENCES

Though the Caucus’ goals today are wide-ranging, the minutes indicate that the group has not lost sight of its founding purpose­—to limit Summers’ role in Faculty governance.

The minutes from the Sept. 29 meeting invoke Robert Frost to illustrate the tension between Summers and the Faculty that has characterized much of the president’s tenure.

“‘Fences make good neighbors,’ but in the case of Mass Hall and Univ Hall the fence has been seriously damaged with damaging consequences, slowing the business of the FAS,” those minutes read.

After Summers received a torrent of disapproval at three Faculty meetings in February and March, criticism of the president’s leadership style largely disappeared from public view. But the minutes indicate that those concerns remain among many chairs.

According to the Sept. 29 minutes, some chairs feel it is “important to push-back on searches & [Summers’] directive style.”

The minutes also indicate that the chairs are concerned with Summers’ allegedly aggressive nature in meetings with faculty.

According to the Sept. 29 minutes, the chairs agreed that a meeting with Summers “would only have value if the meeting addressed substantive issues and that [Summers] listened and only responded at the end.”

PUSHING FOR A PLAN

In the minutes, the chairs voice concerns about a perceived lack of transparency between the FAS administration and professors, particularly with regard to Kirby’s unexpected decision this summer to sharply curtail the number of authorized searches for new faculty this year.

“The current suspension of search activity is a result either of a failure at U Hall to have something like a five year plan, or a disinclination to let dept. chairs know what [the plan] is,” the Sept. 15 minutes read. “The haphazard way in which this decision was reported to the chairs did not get an adequate response at the retreat, and the lack of an explanation of what the near future may bring makes it difficult if not impossible for chairs to plan for their own curricular needs.”

The retreat referred to took place on Sept. 13 at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Somerville, Mass. It was at the retreat, to which all department chairs were invited, that Kirby first formally confirmed the rumored slowdown in faculty hiring.

In a letter to all faculty members 10 days later, Kirby explained the sharp slowdown—University Hall has projected a net increase of only three professors for the Faculty this academic year, compared to an average of 21 during Kirby’s first three years as dean—by pointing to a higher-than-expected acceptance rate among candidates who were offered FAS appointments. Professors also report being told of other financial pressures, most notably construction costs that have exceeded projections.

The set of minutes shows that professors questioned the financial constraints given as the cause of the slowdown, pointing to Harvard’s $25.9 billion endowment. Some said the decision indicated a lack of long-term planning for faculty hiring on the part of the administration.

“More transparency regarding the underlying budgetary problem that Bill [Kirby] says now require a slower rate of appointments would be appreciated,” the Oct. 13 minutes read. “The Provost and others have talked about building cost over-runs. Wouldn’t a very small increase in the payout distribution from endowment investments (which seem to be doing very well) solve this problem?”

The Caucus’ working group on faculty planning was created primarily in response to this slowdown, and was designed in part to encourage three-year plans for faculty appointments, according to the Oct. 6 meeting minutes.

DIVISIONS AND DEANS

In addition to indicating concerns about a lack of transparency with regard to FAS finances, the minutes also reveal discontent with new levels of bureaucracy separating departments from administrators.

Among the more vexing issues for the chairs are the divisional deanships, created by Kirby in 2003 to oversee the humanities, social sciences, and physical sciences.

At their first meeting, the chairs said the divisional deans “tend to insert an additional layer for chairs to work through, without providing power and help of their own,” according to the Sept. 15 minutes. “[T]here is a good deal of inconsistency and confusion about the roles of the divisional deans across the different divisions,” the minutes continue.

The chairs also raised concerns about the three vice-provost positions created by Mass. Hall in May.

“[T]he establishment of Divisional Deans and new Vice Provosts was discussed as an obstacle to any effective communication,” the Oct. 6 minutes read.

Some of the chairs also voiced uncertainty about the bureaucratic organization underlying the curricular review, raising “the central question of process and transparency in governance.”

“It was asked if there were a clear sense of how the committee for the curriculum review was constituted and what the charge of all its members was,” the Oct. 6 minutes read. “This was discussed in general in terms of both the proliferation of committees and the lack of communication.”

A RISING VOICE

Caucus members declined to comment on whether the group will continue to exist on a more permanent or official basis. But there are several indications that the group will still to push for more influence, at least for the immediate future.

The group, which is open to all department and committee chairs, has already named its leadership for the spring semester—History Department Chair Andrew Gordon and Environmental Science and Public Policy Committee Chair James J. McCarthy will take over coordinator duties, McDonald said yesterday.

This semester the Caucus has served as an important voice in faculty politics, through two high-profile letters that, although not representing any official view of the Caucus, were organized by the Caucus and contain the signatures of many Caucus members.

Less than two months after Conrad K. Harper resigned from the Harvard Corporation in July, 22 Caucus members published a letter in Harvard Magazine addressed to the committee searching for Harper’s replacement. The letter called for the committee to appoint a Corporation member who would “have deep knowledge of and a close affiliation with the academic world.” This month, the search committee appointed Patricia A. King, a Georgetown law professor and expert in bioethics, to replace Harper.

Another letter signed by some Caucus members was drafted in response to a Nov. 10 report in The Crimson that Summers had planned to fire Kirby last year.

That letter criticized Summers for “backbiting” and “deplorable” tactics in reportedly discussing his dissatisfaction with the dean with professors and others.

After an article about the letter was published in The Crimson, Summers sent a response directly to McDonald, and later to the entire Faculty. In the response, obtained by The Crimson, Summers attempted to allay the chairs’ concern by saying that The Crimson’s sources for the story had engaged in “irresponsible and misguided speculation.”

The Nov. 10 meeting minutes shed light on the chairs’ private deliberations in the wake of that article, and show their support for Kirby’s continued service as dean.

“A consensus developed that however we may individually assess Dean Kirby, replacing him now, just as the college and graduate school are recovering momentum lost through the events of last year would provoke a new crisis,” the minutes read. “Such a change...would have a negative impact on the work of departments, and in some cases change now could be ‘catastrophic,’ in one chair’s view.”

—William C. Marra contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Evan H. Jacobs can be reached at ehjacobs@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Anton S. Troianovski can be reached at atroian@fas.harvard.edu.