Tracking Tenure

Come September, students will no longer arrive on campus to a slew of fresh-faced faculty members. Instead, the same professors with the same interests will stand up to present much the same material as the year before. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) can expect a “pause” in faculty hiring during the 2008-2009 academic year, according to FAS Dean Michael D. Smith, who recently proposed the measure. While University Hall’s desire to maintain a manageable faculty size in the face of administrative and programmatic changes is completely understandable, this hiring slow-down will ultimately disadvantage students who face gaping holes in their departments of choice.

Harvard currently lacks sufficient tenured and tenure-track faculty to provide instruction in a number of fields—from philosophy to history to language studies. For example, the Philosophy department remains incomplete without course offerings in aesthetic philosophy or the philosophy of art. Students wishing to study these fields have no choice but to instead focus on analytic philosophy, an entirely different animal. At an institution as reputable as Harvard, where resources are plentiful enough to hire qualified faculty with diverse research interests, no student should feel unable to pursue their interests due to a lack of faculty resources.

Smith’s plan will ultimately prevent University Hall from remedying this situation by keeping the number of faculty members consistent throughout the 2008-2009 school year. This translates to hiring 25-30 new faculty members to replace those who are leaving or retiring, which when compared with the average hiring rates in the last ten years, represents a 30 percent decrease.

While Smith’s desire for hiring flexibility in the face of FAS administrative restructuring and the departmental changes that accompany the General Education review comes with good reason, students nonetheless still deserve to have their basic academic needs met. To lead a rich academic life, students require faculty who specialize in diverse areas of interest and a comprehensive course selection in a variety of disciplines.

While University Hall’s proposal reflects reasonable concerns and good intentions, this plan to “pause” hiring only reinforces the common perception that Harvard is unfriendly to new hires. More damagingly, it will likely dampen students’ academic curiosity, requiring them to settle for subject matter that does not match their primary interests. It would be wise for the College to expand its offerings—and therefore its faculty—instead of capping it as it is.