FAS Hiring ‘Pause’ Gives Profs Pause

While the specifics of Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Dean Michael D. Smith’s proposed administrative reorganization have earned praise from professors, one aspect of the plan has drawn fire: the proposed slowdown in faculty hiring.

The measure, which Smith is describing as a “pause to plan,” will attempt to keep Faculty numbers steady over the 2008-2009 academic year, meaning that only 25 to 30 new hires will be made, about 30 percent less than the average over the last 10 years, to offset retirements and other departures.

The goal of the cutback, Smith said, is to create “resource headroom,” so that when academic plans are ready to be executed at the end of next school year, FAS will have greater flexibility.

“The worst outcome in my opinion would be to get to the point [where we] decide exactly what we want to do, and then not have the resources to actually do it,” Smith said at an April meeting of the Faculty.

Many departments also have ongoing searches for new faculty which could yield as many as 40 new professors by the end of the year, and the cutback will give FAS time to “absorb” these hires, Smith said.

In interviews, several faculty members said they worried about the effects of the slowdown on departments, while others asked why FAS needs another pause so soon after similar pullbacks in 2003 and 2005 during the troubled tenure of former University President Lawrence H. Summers.

DEPARTMENTAL WORRIES

While department chairs and professors contacted for interviews sympathized with the fiscal concerns brought forth by Smith, they expressed worry over the toll the new measures might have on academic development.

Chair of the Department of Romance Languages Luis Fernández Cifuentes said he was expecting more “leverage” in creating new faculty positions within his department.

“[The measures] do prevent us from hiring new people,” he said. “They are preventing us from being creative in terms of our searches and our hiring.”

Physics department chair Christopher W. Stubbs said he worried about a crunch in creativity, imagining how hiring incentives might change if departments are worried that they will not be able to conduct searches in the upcoming year.

“That creates a sort of use-it-or-lose-it situation where we might be tempted to make appointments that otherwise might not have been made,” he said. “And that’s a consequence...that we’d want to avoid.”

One department chair, who requested anonymity to preserve relationships with the administration, said that the chairs themselves often have to take the heat for failed searches, meaning that the slowdown could be detrimental to intradepartmental relations.

“Its bad news for the chairs if a lot of the search authorizations come back with no’s on them,” the chair said. “Then you have to go back with your tail between your legs and say ‘we didn’t get that one,’ and then people will say, ‘well how come that group got one?’”

A LONG PAUSE?

Other faculty members have questioned the necessity of a year-long “pause to plan” nearly a year into Smith’s tenure.

But David M. Cutler ’87, the outgoing divisional dean for the social sciences, said that professors are understanding of the need for the pause, and that their frustration is simply the result of exhaustion after years of turmoil. Smith is the fourth FAS Dean in the last two years.

“There’s not a lot of ‘Oh god how terrible it is that Mike Smith has to think about what he’s doing,” Cutler said. “What people are thinking is ‘Oh god we have to do this again,’ and people wish we just had one dean and one president for a long period of time.”

German professor Judith L. Ryan said that both her department and others want to move forward as soon as possible.

“I’m concerned about this mantra of ‘pause to proceed,’” she said. “Dean Smith has clearly decided that he needs more time to be planning for the Faculty as a whole...rather than focusing on individual departments. While I understand that, it’s not easy for us to continue functioning with positions unfilled.”

—Staff writer Maxwell L. Child can be reached at mchild@fas.harvard.edu.