Challenge to Presidency May Bring University Back to Decentralized Past

The proposal by Faculty Council members yesterday to select their next dean marks a break from centuries of Harvard tradition.

But the bid by professors to establish a modicum of self-governance in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) is in some respects an attempt to return to Harvard’s historically decentralized administrative structure.

If the Faculty does take control of the dean search, that would infringe upon the president’s traditional sphere of influence.

Yet, while yesterday’s proposal in some senses upends the standard dean selection process, it also highlights the reality that—even when Lawrence H. Summers has named his deans himself—the president has had little control over the administrators he places in office.

UNWRITTEN RULES

“I’m not aware of any written procedure” for selecting school chiefs, former Faculty Dean Henry Rosovsky said in an interview last week, “but there is a long history.” While past presidents have consulted with professors and Corporation members to varying degrees in the selection process, Rosovsky said, “the deans who head faculties are chosen by the president.”

Derek C. Bok, who led the University from 1971 to 1991, consulted informally with professors on dean appointments. And Bok’s successor, Neil L. Rudenstine, “set up committees to seek the wisdom of the faculty,” according to Rosovsky, who also served on the Harvard Corporation from 1985 to 1996.

Under the proposal presented at yesterday’s Faculty Council meeting, professors might become decision-makers—rather than advisers—in the dean search process.

Such a proposal would take away the president’s power to use his dean selections as a way to steer the University’s course. But, according to some Harvard historians, that was a power that presidents never actually held.

“Presidents think they will be able to shape the University through their appointments,” Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Peter J. Gomes, who teaches a course on the history of Harvard and its presidents, said last week. “It doesn’t always work out that way.”

‘DON’T CHANGE DEANS LIKE SOCKS’

Bok, Harvard’s 25th president, chose four major deans in his first half-decade in Massachusetts Hall.

And Rudenstine, who assumed the presidency in 1991, made six major dean appointments in his first five years.

Since taking office in the fall of 2001, Summers has named deans of the Design School, the Divinity School, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), the Graduate School of Education, the Kennedy School, and the Law School.

And, of Harvard’s 10 top deans at the moment, two are serving in an interim capacity, and one—Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby—has announced his intention to resign at the end of this semester.

If Summers fills the vacancies at the Business School, the Graduate School of Education, and FAS by the end of this spring, he will have made nine major dean appointments in his first half-decade.

Not all those dean appointments have worked out according to Summers’ plans. Four individuals close to the central administration have told The Crimson that Summers forced Kirby to resign. And Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, a Summers appointee who stepped down as dean of the School of Education last March after just three years in office, wrote in her resignation letter, “I never wanted to be dean.”

But the upshot is that Summers has had more opportunities to shape—and reshape—the University’s administration in his first half-decade than his recent predecessors have.

There are two general schools of thought regarding the high number of recent vacancies at the helm of Harvard’s faculties.

“The knee-jerk answer is that this adds to [Summers’] power because it gives him a greater hand in the running of Harvard’s schools,” said Richard Bradley, author of the book “Harvard Rules,” a critical assessment of Summers’ tenure.

But, according to Bradley, if deans depart or are forced out by Summers, that “makes it harder to attract good people down the line.”

As Gomes said, “You don’t change deans like socks. If you do, then you’re inviting a lot of trouble.”

THE ‘OLD DAYS’ AREN’T OVER

According to Gomes, “after presidents make their appointments, that’s where the hard work begins.”

“The chief power of the president is the power to persuade,” Gomes said.

And it is this power that Summers seems to lack—if Tuesday’s Faculty meeting is any indication.

Summers’ five years of leadership have left the Faculty “divided, demoralized, and dispirited,” English Department Chair James Engell said at Tuesday’s session, echoing the sentiments of other professors who spoke at the meeting.

And that sense of demoralization has led professors to launch perhaps the most potent challenge to presidential power in recent memory. Some Summers watchers say that Harvard’s 27th president has asserted more control over the individual schools than his recent predecessors.

If professors take control of the search for Kirby’s successor and reassert their own authority over FAS, would that be a revolution?

Rather, it might be more of a restoration—a return to the status quo from earlier eras of Harvard history.

“Historically, the deans were independent and controlled their own fiefdoms,” said Andrew Schlesinger, the author of “Veritas: Harvard College and the American Experience.”

“In the old days,” Schlesinger said, “the president was looked upon as an interloper if he interfered too much.”

The “old days” may be over, but among large blocks of the Faculty, the president is looked upon as an interloper once more.

—Staff writer Daniel J. T. Schuker can be reached at dschuker@fas.harvard.edu.