University Science Plans Face Faculty Criticism

A handful of professors yesterday ripped into a proposal for modernizing science research and instruction at Harvard, betraying a lingering hesitance among the Faculty to submit to greater central governance.

At a town-hall meeting for members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), professors questioned some of a University-wide committee’s recommendations—particularly the establishment of a central body empowered to make appointments across the University. Several Faculty members also criticized the report for focusing too much on the life sciences, too little on “pure science,” and too much on moving the University’s most cutting-edge research to the new Allston campus.

“I am very disappointed at the short shrift the report gave to basic science, as opposed to interdisciplinary science or trendy science,” said Richard L. Taylor, the Smith professor of mathematics.

“I am not certain,” he added, “that in 50 years’ time there will be great research going on in generative biology in medicine or...stem cells.”

Committee co-chair and biologist Andrew Murray retorted, “I suspect that in 1956, your counterpart might have said, ‘I expect to see great research going on in biology and physics but not in this new field of molecular biology.’”

“We are 100 percent committed to the idea of maintaining Harvard’s excellence in the core disciplines,” said Murray, who heads the molecular and cellular biology department. One of the committee’s recommendations says that Harvard should “continue to invest in core disciplines.”

The voices of protest came at a particularly crucial juncture for science at Harvard, with the unveiling last week of a new plan to overhaul the Core Curriculum for undergraduates and key decisions looming over what the multi-billion-dollar Allston campus will look like.

The proposal discussed yesterday, at a two-hour-long, early-morning meeting attended by about 40 professors, was released over the summer by the 24-member University Planning Committee for Science and Engineering. The preliminary report recommended fostering research across Harvard’s schools by creating four University-wide departments and a special committee with the power to allocate a total of 75 full-time faculty positions anywhere at Harvard—including the School of Public Health, the Medical School, and FAS.

Some professors praised the committee’s push to help unite Harvard’s disparate groups of researchers as the frontiers of science cross disciplinary boundaries. But others called the recommendations reminiscent of former University president Lawrence H. Summers’ ill-received attempts to cut through the traditional independence of Harvard’s schools.

“That’s the kind of heavy-handed centralization that, I think, fueled the FAS discontent with the Summers administration,” said Wilfried Schmid, the Robinson professor of mathematics.

Richard M. Losick, the Cabot professor of biology, said he saw an “Allston-centric emphasis” to the report. He said he was concerned that cutting-edge research at the “interface” of various disciplines would abandon the Cambridge campus.

“It would kill us if the most exciting science at the interfaces went across the river,” Losick said.

In response, Murray acknowledged that the University had to steer between two extremes in Allston’s future: that the site might become either the home for “cool and interesting science” or a “warehouse” for initiatives that don’t fit elsewhere.

But, he remarked, “The report is a series of recommendations—and what the University does with them is likely to be very different from what’s in the report.”

The committee, which Murray co-chaired along with physicist Christopher W. Stubbs and biochemist Christopher T. Walsh, is scheduled to present a final report to Harvard’s governing boards in December.

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