FAS Dean To Hold Open Forum on Budget Deficit

In the five months since Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael D. Smith held a town hall meeting with the FAS community regarding a then-$220 million deficit, proposed solutions to the budgetary quagmire have been scant, breeding confusion among faculty and staff, who hope that this afternoon’s “Discussion with the Dean” will end the dry spell.

During the open forum—which will be held from 3:30 to 5:00 in Science Center B, with an adjacent lecture hall reserved for overflow—Smith will discuss “the positive financial results” from the last fiscal year and take questions from the audience, he wrote in an e-mailed statement sent to faculty and staff last Tuesday.

Smith said he will begin today’s meeting with a preview of the annual Dean’s report, which will survey FAS’ financial data for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2008. The report—whose release had been delayed from this past spring to early October—will outline information concerning FAS finances for fiscal year 2009 as well, Smith said at a May faculty meeting.

“In this new year, as I did during the difficult times of the past year, I will stay in close contact with our large and diverse community,” Smith wrote. “I hope my communications will help each of you to understand the progress we are making to overcome the financial challenges that beset the FAS.”

Despite Smith’s overtures at open communication between administrative decision-makers and the rest of the Faculty, some faculty and staff said in interviews with The Crimson that information regarding FAS’ financial status has been sparse to nonexistent in the past few months.

“Nothing. Nothing, other than Mike [Smith] sending out a notice saying there will be a meeting...There’s no transparency,” said Engineering Professor Frederick H. Abernathy, who expressed frustration at the absence of administrative outreach in the face of a gaping deficit.

At the town hall meeting in April, Smith called for a broad-based restructuring of FAS to close a $220 million deficit over the next two years. In May, $77 million of possible savings proposed by FAS units were implemented in a sweeping round of cuts, which later included mass layoffs for staff. Smith charged six working groups with identifying the remaining $143 million. Those groups have seen varying degrees of progress since their creation.

“He is in the unenviable position of serving as Dean during the school’s—through no fault of his—most significant financial crisis,” wrote FAS Associate Dean Robert G. Doyle in an e-mailed statement. “I admire his willingness to personally address the faculty, students, and staff and his willingness to face unscripted questions.”

Richard Tuck, chair of the social studies committee, said there has not been “much detailed discussion” concerning the FAS budget of late.

“I don’t think that it will be revealed that the picture is much rosier than we thought,” said Jay H. Jasanoff, interim chair of the linguistics department. “I think that we’re going to hear that great stringencies are required still, and I will be listening closely to hear whether the nuances make it sound a little less dire than last spring.”

The forum, which will be recorded for later viewing on the Web, may be Smith’s opportunity to dispel the sense of benightedness that has left faculty and staff grasping for answers.

“This is his chance,” Abernathy said. “It behooves the dean to tell us financially where we are, because that’s what the dean’s job is.”

—Staff writer Bonnie J. Kavoussi can be reached at kavoussi@fas.harvard.edu.  

—Staff writer Esther I. Yi can be reached at estheryi@fas.harvard.edu.