In Their Own Hands

When professors voted that they lack confidence in the leadership of University President Lawrence H. Summers at the March 15 meeting of the Faculty, the unexpected development was splashed across the front pages of the nation’s newspapers.

But it may be that another meeting, at the time unbeknownst to the press and most members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), will have even greater implications for the future of the University.

On the morning of Thursday, Feb. 24, 15 FAS department chairs gathered in the Burr Hall wing of the Barker Center to discuss the crisis touched off at a Faculty meeting nine days earlier.

Since the inaugural meeting in Barker 133, the chairs have met every Thursday morning, without the presence of either Summers or Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby, to discuss their concerns with the governance of FAS and the University as a whole.

The initial group of 15 has expanded so that virtually every department or degree-granting chair has been personally invited to the meetings. To date, over three dozen current and incoming chairs—most from the humanities and social sciences, and many of whom have been vocal critics of Summers—have attended the meetings, which are unprecedented in the history of FAS, according to organizers.

Several supporters of Summers have also attended the meetings, which organizers say are open to all FAS degree-granting chairs.

The meetings represent not only a lack of confidence in Summers’ leadership, but also a frustration with the traditional venues for discussing concerns. These channels of communication include monthly Faculty meetings, which are chaired by Summers, and bi-weekly meetings of the Faculty Council, the 18-member FAS governing body, which are chaired by Kirby.

The group has taken its concerns straight to the top, meeting with members of the Corporation—the University’s highest governing board—on April 24.

The meetings are part of a broad movement within the Faculty, voiced most forcefully in the no confidence vote, to reclaim control of FAS.

The struggle for power amounts to a territorial dispute over three major areas of University governance—the ongoing Harvard College Curricular Review, the process of tenure appointments, and administrative control over the allocation of financial resources, including Allston planning.

As with the Faculty at large, the collection of department chairs is not monolithic in its prescription for the future of the FAS-Summers relationship, as not all professors share the discontent of the majority of the Faculty with Summers’ leadership. And some professors say that since the March vote, Summers has already begun to temper his aggressive, hands-on approach to FAS management.

But as the collection of chairs continues to meet throughout next year, even as the Faculty returns its attention to the day-to-day affairs of running FAS, it is unlikely that broader leadership concerns will go unaddressed.

And if the tone of many members of the group is any indication, to address those concerns and satisfy the Faculty, Summers will have to do more than change his style of managing FAS—he will have to stop governing it.

“There are people who I think believe that the only way to proceed is to box off the FAS as much as possible from intervention from above of the sorts that occurred,” says Jan Ziolkowski, acting chair of the folklore and mythology department, who has been the driving force behind the chair meetings. “Since we don’t have any say in the matter [of whether a president stays or goes] beyond what the vote itself expressed, what we have to do is ensure that operations that are most important to us are buffered as much as possible from incursion.”

THE MAN IN THE MIDDLE

When Summers appeared before a group of scholars at a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) conference on Jan. 14, his relationship with FAS professors was already tenuous, strained by disagreements over his treatment of faculty and an impression of a lack of transparency.

His suggestion that “issues of intrinsic aptitude” might be responsible for the dearth of women professors in the sciences sparked what many saw as an inevitable explosion, as criticisms of Summers’ remarks rapidly transformed into broader concerns with his leadership on many different fronts.

“The conflict between President Summers and FAS was surely inevitable,” says Professor of Economics Edward L. Glaeser, who has spoken out in support of the president. “You have one strong-minded president and one very strong-minded group of people in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.”

Caught in between Summers and the Faculty is Kirby. Although he represents FAS, he also answers directly to the president and must serve as an effectual intermediary between the two.

Some professors place part of the blame for the centralization of power on Kirby, saying that he has not been firm enough in defending the interests of the Faculty in the face of Summers’ aggressive leadership style.

“If he had been strong, he could have alleviated some of the problems,” says one faculty member. “A lot of changes have been imposed on FAS and he’s accepted those.”

“The hope that Kirby might assert himself on behalf of FAS and in any way against the will of Summers is no more than a hope at this point,” adds another senior faculty member.

Both professors spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve their working relationships with Kirby.

But some professors are eager to see how Kirby will act if Summers retreats from FAS affairs. They say that Kirby has been placed in a difficult position by the winter crisis, forced to publicly support Summers while his faculty rose in open revolt against the president.

It is possible, though, that while Kirby has not publicly dissented from Summers’ policies, in private he may be a more forceful advocate for his Faculty.

As adviser to the president, Kirby cannot easily criticize Summers—if he were to do so, “the whole institution is headed to a breakdown,” Saltonstall Professor of History Charles S. Maier ’60 said in March.

But some professors point to Kirby’s controversial decision at the end of last year to take control of a set of funds that individual departments had been rolling over annually as proof that centralization is not only happening at Summers’ behest.

Until last year, departments that had not used up their entire budget were allowed to save the surplus funds and use them for special academic functions.

For example, the Comparative Literature Department used the funds to finance graduate student research and trips to academic conferences, according to the department’s chair, William Mills Todd III.

Todd, who is a member of the group of chairs, says smaller departments lost tens of thousands of dollars, while larger departments lost hundreds of thousands. “This is chump change,” he says. “The University bought itself a lot of ill will with this, and didn’t buy itself the ability to put up the Guggenheim.”

But Kirby defends his decision to reclaim the funds as necessary “to make sure we use these resources in the most coordinated way for the broader purposes of the faculty.”

Professors say the centralization of financial resources has disenfranchised individual departments, and Todd says the reclaiming of funds had the effect of reducing departments’ ability to conduct scholarly work.

“We were using our administrative creativity for a very specific, and we thought academically responsible, purpose. By confiscating these funds in a sense the administration…was taking that creativity, that responsibility, out of our hands,” Todd says. “I don’t think you can ask people to chair departments and give them no measure of creativity and responsibility.”

THE MONEY AND THE MOVE

While the University’s plans to expand into Allston may not take shape for decades, the way Summers has managed the move has earned him criticism from faculty already.

According to one Faculty Council member who attended an April 25 meeting between six members of the Faculty Council and two members of the Corporation, James R. Houghton ’58, the senior fellow of the Corporation, dubbed the University’s planned expansion into Allston “maybe the biggest thing that’s happened since 1636.”

Given these high stakes, and the radical restructuring of the University that Allston development will produce, faculty have clashed with Summers for influence on the plans for expansion.

At a 2003 Faculty meeting, when Professor of German Peter J. Burgard asked Summers whether the Faculty would vote on Allston plans, Summers answered with a simple “No.”

“I would have thought the Faculty meeting would be a forum for discussion before the move is a fait accompli, but with the planning for the move already on the docket, it seems as if it is a fait accompli,” Burgard told The Crimson after the meeting.

And two Faculty Council members, speaking on the condition of anonymity because their meeting with the Corporation was off the record, say that when they were presented with a report on Allston planning at a May 18 meeting of the Council, the meeting was a “show and tell” session.

In particular, faculty have spoken out against the progress of plans to build a half-million square foot science building in Allston that will be one of the first constructions to be completed there, Summers said last week.

The building has not yet been funded, and some faculty have expressed concern that FAS will lose substantial funding as money is directed toward the project.

Glaeser, a member of the Allston Master Planning Advisory Committee, dismisses accusations that the Faculty has been underrepresented in Allston planning.

“The president has been very aggressive in seeking faculty input on Allston,” he says. “There is a lot of information involved in making decisions for Allston. The average faculty member has put in nowhere near [the requisite] effort, and has a much weaker grasp of the issues and so you can’t expect them to make the central decisions.”

The group of chairs has worked with the Faculty Council to invoke powers granted in the Council’s charter that have long gone unexercised. Both groups refer to a clause that grants the Council advisory power over “allocations of space” as evidence that it should have more of a decision-making role in Allston development.

According to article 1, section 1, of the Council’s charter, which was passed on Dec. 2, 1969, the Council “will advise the Dean of the Faculty on allocations of space, building programs, and plans and priorities for Faculty growth and development.”

Not all professors see the shift toward centralization as an unqualified loss for the University. Lee Professor of Economics Claudia Golden says Summers’ instincts to centralize control will make for speedier execution of University-wide initiatives.

“Larry is good for Harvard,” Goldin says. “A large fraction of faculty at Harvard know that we need to be brought into the twenty-first century so that we can continue to be a great university, particularly in the sciences.”

TENURE AND TEACHING

At the heart of the Summers-Faculty clash rest two aspects of governance over which professors say they have historically exercised significant oversight—tenure appointments and curricular reform.

Many professors say that on ad hoc tenure committees—advisory committees that vet tenure candidates before the University president decides whether or not to grant the candidate tenure—Summers aggressively pushes his favored candidates over others and show favoritism towards certain subfields within a discipline, stifling a department’s ability to make its own appointments.

“Summers came in with a fairly strong vision of strengthening certain kinds of areas and letting others go,” says one senior faculty member, speaking on the condition of anonymity because tenure meetings are off the record.

Summers denies that he ignores departmental tenure recommendations.

“Anybody who feels that way about a specific case, my door’s always open, and I’d like to talk about it with them,” Summers says. “I think the rate at which ...departmental recommendations have been turned down is very much in line, or if anything slightly lower during my time as president, than in the case of my predecessors.”

While they have no say in who comes up for tenure, University presidents have always had the sole power to grant tenure appointments. Though professors say they are not disputing Summers’ right to that power, they do say they want him to have less of an influence on which candidates are approved and show more respect for a department’s preferences.

“Our concern is not so much the structure of the ad hoc committees as the President’s role on those occasions,” says Judith L. Ryan, who is the acting chair of the Germanic languages and literature department and is a member of the group of chairs.

Summers and the Faculty have of late clashed to a lesser extent over the College’s ongoing curricular review.

While Summers’ influence on the shape of the review’s current recommendations has been disputed, most professors expressed satisfaction when it was revealed that the President decided earlier this semester to cease all formal involvement in the curricular review.

“He came under the general criticism that he was trying to micromanage some of the Faculty’s affairs, so I think he decided that it would be best if he withdrew,” Baird Professor of Science Gary J. Feldman said last month.

In the past two curricular reviews, University presidents have played large roles in forming the new curricula—James Conant ’13 produced the bestselling Redbook on general education in the late 1940s, and Derek Bok spearheaded the formation of today’s Core Curriculum.

Summers says he had always planned to withdraw from the review at this stage, leaving it, as he said, in the hands of the Faculty.

A CHANGED MAN?

Since March 15, many professors say they have seen a noticeably positive change in Summers’ leadership style.

Some, including Professor of Economics David I. Laibson ’88 and Todd, say they have heard reports that Summers has improved his conduct on ad hoc committees.

According to Todd, a friend of his who served on an ad hoc with Summers a few weeks ago said the president was much more respectful in his interactions with colleagues.

“What I’m hearing consistently is that his style has become far more responsive and more collegial in recent months, so I think he’s hearing that concern, has listened, and his current style reflects a thoughtful response to that criticism,” Laibson says.

Summers’ withdrawal from the curricular review may be further evidence that he has committed himself to a permanent change in his governance style.

But many professors remain skeptical that the changes are here for the long run, and are calling for more immediate, drastic action.

Sociology Department Chair Mary C. Waters, a member of the group of chairs, says she thinks that for the good of Harvard, Summers should step down. Though Ryan says she has not yet decided whether or not Summers should resign, she says he should stop chairing Faculty meetings.

The Corporation has sole power to remove the President. Nonetheless, FAS, with 672 professors, is by far the largest of the University’s nine faculties, and it will be difficult for Summers to serve successfully as President if he cannot regain its confidence.

At the March 15 Faculty meeting, 218 voted that they lacked confidence in Summers, 185 voted for confidence, with 18 abstentions.

To earn back the Faculty’s faith, Summers must convince professors that he respects their opinions and their disciplines and that the changes to his approach are permanent.

“I think [the future] sort of depends on if there is a change in his style. If there is a long-term change, I think that people will be able to work within that context,” says Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department Chair Cynthia M. Friend, who is a member of the group of chairs. “If not, it’s difficult to predict.”

—Staff writer William C. Marra can be reached at wmarra@fas.harvard.edu.