The Centralization of FAS

It’s a call for unity.

Faced with the largest financial crisis in recent history, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael D. Smith has enhanced the rhetoric of shared priorities across the traditionally decentralized school. FAS’ path to recovery, Smith says, will require staunch commitment to a “core mission.”

But even as Smith successfully trims a daunting budget deficit, his approach has struck a nervous chord among faculty members who benefit from the incongruent academic and spending methods of the school. Led by affiliates of some of the traditionally independent FAS centers, they have voiced concerns that an overarching financial mission could intrude into their own academic priorities.

But in establishing a series of financial priorities—centered around student instruction and faculty research—Smith expects the many and varied stakeholders of the school to fall into line.

“We as a Faculty must apply our resources, both financial capital and human capital, to the pursuit of our core mission first and foremost,” Smith wrote in a letter to the Faculty in February.

“This is an affirmation of what we all know to be true,” he wrote.

THREATENING THE CROWN JEWELS

In FAS, decentralization is epitomized by a spate of centers and institutes. Developed across the school in the last 50 years, these hubs, many of them interdisciplinary, are composed of faculty members and affiliates with shared interests and the funds to act on them—distinct from degree-granting academic departments that focus on student instruction in the classroom.

In a time of increased efforts at centralization, the quasi-independent and often self-generated and self-governed nature of the centers affords them a unique place in the University.

Harvard’s traditional “bottom-up” structure—in which the “very, very best ideas” are produced by the Faculty and gain broader administrative support—is the source of the University’s “great genius,” says former FAS Dean William C. Kirby.

“It’s the capacity for good ideas to come from the Faculty and gain the support of deans,” says Kirby, who left his position as dean to head the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies in 2006. “It encourages what you might call the best kind of academic entrepreneurialism.”

“The centers are the jewels in the crown,” says Anthropology Professor Arthur M. Kleinman, who heads the Harvard University Asia Center, of the centers’ relationship to the University.

“We have faculty who are very entrepreneurial, who are incredibly imaginative and effective in doing things, and the University has always encouraged that,” Kleinman adds. “We don’t want to see that change.”

THE VOICING OF ANXIETY

At a Faculty meeting on March 2, professors went public with their angst about the centralized priorities for FAS.

“What we see happening here is a very fundamental shift in the governance, the autonomy of the centers,” said David G. Blackbourn, director of the Minda de Gunzberg Center for European Studies, to Smith. “What, sir, it seems you are asking now is to take control.”

Blackbourn joined a series of professors affiliated with area-study centers—whose academic goals are focused on a particular region—who approached the microphone to address Smith and the faculty members who were present.

But the professors took issue with a priority-driven approach that has gained support from the highest rungs of the University.

Sitting at the front of the room, University President Drew G. Faust came to Smith’s defense: “I would hope that no unit would want to be immune to that kind of questioning and priority setting,” she said.

Indeed, the public concern opened a two-way debate, even among center affiliates. Government Professor Daniel Carpenter, director of the Center for American Political Studies, said at the time that his center’s priorities—largely focused on student research funding—were aligned with FAS priorities.

The new policy will push centers to “not just be a faculty bastion, a little enclave away from the University,” he said.

SETTING PRIORITIES

With the financial crisis on his shoulders, Smith set in motion the once-sluggish wheels of change at Harvard.

Facing a monumental $220 million budget deficit in the wake of a 30 percent drop in the endowment at the end of 2008, Smith began a multi-year plan to find additional funds and cut back in certain areas, asking units to surrender some of their institutional independence in service of a common financial goal.

Wielding the power of the purse, Smith has sought to channel spending and reconcile a “disconnect” between academic and budgetary planning that he described in last year’s Dean’s report.

His focus on core priorities dates back to the summer of 2008, when FAS established a commitment to what the FAS Planning website broadly labels “essential curricular needs, intellectual priorities that will strengthen departments and centers, and interdisciplinary collaboration.”

Like Smith’s rhetoric, the actual identity of these so-called “core priorities” have been vague, and budgetary decisions are being fleshed out in direct coordination between the administration and individuals units.

Department and center administrators say they have spent many additional hours under scrutiny from the FAS budget office as the two sides come to a consensus on expenditure priorities—a decision on which FAS has final say.

“There will be more central planning,” says History of Art and Architecture Professor Robin E. Kelsey, who serves on the Faculty Council, the highest governing board of FAS. “The different parts of FAS will need to justify their activities with respect to the core mission of the school.”

“I haven’t seen it as micromanaging,” says History of Art and Architecture Department Administrator Deanna Dalrymple. “I’ve seen it as survival.”

A FINANCIAL GOAL

Facing at least a $35 million deficit, the FAS budget office communicated the new budgeting approach to the community in the month leading to the March Faculty meeting. The policy required affiliated FAS units—including centers—to fall into line and justify that all their expenditures serve core FAS priorities.

In the past, certain centers had exercised a great deal of autonomy in spending funds allocated by donors towards their fields. But with his fresh emphasis on the “core priorities” of FAS, Smith was now essentially prescribing the areas in which units ought to spend.

While Smith has made it clear that a donor’s intent will be honored, the policy allows FAS central administration the opportunity to target funds efficiently so that some can be redirected from within the confines of a particular center to broader University priorities.

For example, the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute began funding Ukrainian language instruction this academic year—a hefty financial responsibility that had traditionally been upheld by the Slavic Languages Department, says Executive Director Tymish J. Holowinsky.

“We all pitched in together on this because we recognized it was an extraordinary time,” says Kleinman, who noted that his Asia Center had redirected funds away from the faculty research support that the center has previously offered.

Kleinman took part in a series of meetings with the dean and finance officers from FAS as they sought to arrive at a common ground on what contributions were expected of the centers.

“We did come together,” Kleinman says. “And I’m hoping that in the future we will be out of this extraordinary time and we will return to the situation we’ve had in the past, in which the centers had a great deal more leeway and independence.”

SERVING THE CORE MISSION

Centers had been asked to make sacrifices, as they are quick to point out. But they do not represent the only sectors of FAS where personal priorities have been pushed aside as the “core mission” takes priority.

Even department administrators, who are more dependent on unrestricted “subvention” funds from the dean, say that their own wishes do not necessarily align with those expressed by the FAS finance office.

One department administrator in the humanities explained that her own department has been asked to redirect funds for student travel grants to priorities that the FAS financial office has said are more aligned with FAS priorities.

Smith’s office has asked that the department contribute toward graduate student stipends and faculty salaries in the department—costs traditionally covered by unrestricted funds from FAS itself that have enabled the department to focus on more specific academic priorities, such as student travel.

“We really sort of spent the money that we have,” says the administrator, who asked to remain anonymous to preserve her relationship with the administration.

“But if they’re expecting us to sort of pay for more things, that might impact our day-to-day business,” she adds.

—Staff writer Noah S. Rayman can be reached at nrayman@fas.harvard.edu.