Greater Than Their Sum

Next semester, some of the top professors to grace Harvard’s lecterns may be things of the past. Rival universities are taking advantage of the ongoing controversy between the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and University President Lawrence H. Summers to court valuable professors, including at least two senior faculty members—Professor of Economics Caroline M. Hoxby ’88 and Chair of the Sociology Department Mary C. Waters. Faculty members who are being wooed by other schools must stay not only for Harvard students, but for themselves, and for the good of the University.

We understand that many issues factor into faculty members’ decisions to leave the College. For any professors that do decide to leave, the recent Summers controversy may have just been the catalyst—not the sole reason—that turned a long delayed career choice into a reality. But owing to the recent recruitment efforts of other schools, we are particularly worried that the current round of academic cherry-picking may succeed, to Harvard’s great detriment.

Many of the College’s amazing professors sweeten the Harvard experience—some students wait years to take the classes taught by certain professors. Teaching comes first, at least for us, and we, as students, don’t want power politics within Harvard (and without) to deprive us of our most precious assets.

Student concerns, however, are minor compared with real faculty complaints. Faculty members are frustrated with the way Summers is running the University, but that is all the more reason to stay. If every professor who is upset with Summers were to leave, what kind of Harvard would we be left with? Without different viewpoints, change that is sorely needed would halt. We need a diversity of voices at the College, especially at this critical point in time. If over 500 faculty members care enough about Harvard to show up to last Tuesday’s Faculty meeting, then none of them should turn their backs on Harvard until the changes they demanded have been put in place.

With the Harvard College Curricular Review busy envisioning the future of pedagogy at the College and all Ivies facing similar problems with tenured women and minority professors, not to mention the Summers-leadership controversy, there has rarely been a time of greater plasticity in the College’s policies and future goals. Harvard professors are in a unique position to reshape Harvard right now. And thanks to our place as a leader of American higher education, changes in current policies will reverberate far away from Cambridge. The faculty needs to stay so that the changes Harvard makes now are reforms that the Harvard of the future can be proud of.

Presidents come and presidents go, but some faculty have been here since the Pusey era. These professors represent a vast repository of institutional memory and experience, all of which must be put to good use in the coming days. Harvard students won’t be the only ones suffering if professors decide to throw in the towel for new climes. Harvard as an entity will be injured.

A vast matrix of current events, personal aspirations, and career considerations will ultimately determine whether individual faculty members choose to pack it up. For our sake—and for Harvard’s—we hope that faculty members will be brave and resolute enough to use their present gripes not as an excuse to leave, but as a spark to start crafting a new, better College for us all.