Harvard's Gatekeeper

What does it take to reach the pinnacle of academia and receive tenure at Harvard? While nearly everyone agrees that a faculty member must be a top-notch researcher and scholar, the relative importance of a variety of other factors is highly debatable. Harvard’s president has a hand in every tenure offer the University extends; our next president must understand the importance of this power. Weighing these other factors will be one of the most critical judgments that he or she will have to make. We find two criteria that are particularly undervalued in the current system. The first is a candidate’s teaching ability. The second is the need to hire professors whose academic specialties are underrepresented at the University.