For Khurana, A Chance To Practice What He Teaches

Cabot House Co-Master Rakesh Khurana, who will assume the position of Dean of the College this summer, will bring leadership expertise from Harvard Business School and insider experience of House life to one of the University’s highest offices, colleagues and students say.

Born in India and raised in Queens, Khurana will be the first dean of the College who is of Indian descent when he officially takes the post on July 1, more than a year after former dean Evelynn M. Hammonds announced she would resign. His expected deanship comes after two decades at Harvard, where Khurana has filled a number of roles ranging from student to professor to House master—and now, the College’s top administrator.

A professor with a joint-appointment at the Business School and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, he took the reins of Cabot House with his wife, Stephanie R. Khurana, in 2010, approaching the role with an entrepreneurial mindset. Since then, Khurana’s campus profile has grown as he has voiced his opinion both formally and informally on hot-button College issues such as alcohol policy, academic integrity, and Greek life.

Now, a scholar known for his work on leadership and organizational management will be leading Harvard’s flagship school.

Students across the Charles River in Allston describe Khurana as a compassionate instructor devoted to all aspects of student life, while colleagues, who say that the professor possesses commendable leadership skills, say that they expect him to shape life at College for the better, even as his goals remain unknown.

PRACTICING WHAT HE TEACHES

The incoming dean will arrive at the first floor of University Hall as a seasoned academic who has established a career through sociology-driven research on leadership practices and organizational management, studying and teaching skills that may prove useful in his new job.

Majoring in economics and industrial labor relations at Cornell University, Khurana headed to Harvard after college, earning a Master’s degree in sociology at the University in 1997 and a Ph.D. in organizational behavior a year later. Following a short stint as an assistant professor of management at MIT, Khurana accepted a teaching position at Harvard Business School in 2000. He taught in the school’s business administration program and became a tenured professor in 2008.

Joseph L. Bower, a professor at the Business School who has known Khurana since he was a Ph.D. student, said he expects that Khurana’s scholarship will inform him in his new role.

“When you build courses on leadership, what you’re trying to do is help people think through what it means to work with other people and get them to work together to accomplish something,” Bower said.

Khurana has published books and journal articles on various topics, including the theoretical basis for leadership studies and the pitfalls of charismatic leadership in the corporate world. He serves as the course chair for the Leadership and Organizational Behavior course at the Business School that is required of all first-year students.

“It's interesting that he not only teaches leadership, but he practices it too,” said Ranjay Gulati, the unit head of the Business School’s Organizational Behavior Department in which Khurana is a faculty member. “His work really spans theory and practice really makes him an exceptional person for the position he has been put in.”

Winthrop House tutor Sanjey Sivanesan, who took one of Khurana’s courses last semester, said that in class, Khurana emphasized that effective leadership requires an understanding of organizational culture.

“The biggest takeaway was just that the culture is really really important,” he said, adding that Khurana stressed that “setting the tone from the top is what dictates how organizations are run.”

‘A LOVING LEADER’

Back across the river at Cabot House, Khurana has established a reputation as an empathetic House master invested in all aspects of students lives, affiliates there say.

Cabot House tutors said that they view Khurana as an open-minded and caring House master.

“He emphasizes community needs,” Maryam M. Gharavi, a tutor in the House who interviewed Khurana during the masters selection process, wrote in an email to The Crimson. “He stresses care and attention to the whole student.”

Gharavi said that Khurana welcomes different perspectives on controversial matters related to student life.

“He doesn't quiet difficult discussion and never makes the people around him feel that they have to dampen who they are outside of their structural roles,” she wrote. “I don't know anyone more dedicated to empowering the whole student than Rakesh Khurana.”

Aron Zingman, another Cabot tutor, wrote in an email that Khurana is “the best boss you could hope for.”

“He inspires people and makes them feel accomplished through the work [they] do with his support,” Zingman wrote.

Nworah B. Ayogu ’10, an Adams House tutor who has worked with Khurana and has taken his class, called the incoming dean “warm and fuzzy.”

“He’s a loving leader in the sense that he’s someone who leads with emotion,” Ayogu said, adding that Khurana “puts students first.”

“He’s very interested in people as people,” he said.

Khurana’s colleagues echoed these sentiments of his approach to student life.

“As a House master, the amount of caring and purpose he brings is extraordinary,” Gulati said.

UNDETERMINED AGENDA

Though he has not yet determined his goals for the deanship, Khurana has been a vocal participant in discussions on a range of issues that fall under the purview of the dean of the College and colleagues say they are optimistic about his future in University Hall.

In 2010, he chaired of a committee composed of students and administrators to review the College’s alcohol policy, helping to inform a new set of guidelines designed to standardize rules across the College. Khurana told The Crimson last spring that the policy was designed to accommodate the different uses of alcohol between upperclassmen and freshmen instead of a “one size fits all” solution.

Khurana also has served on the Academic Integrity Committee, which first convened in 2010, but has accelerated its work, including efforts to establish an honor code, since the Government 1310 cheating scandal. A subcommittee began drafting an honor code in October and was expected to undergo review by the entire committee before going on for formal approval.

Khurana has also advocated against Greek life in favor of house community, echoing the administration’s decades-long refusal to recognize sororities, fraternities, and final clubs.

“I’m always suspicious of a club that builds itself on gendered exclusivity,” Khurana told the Crimson in 2011. “It’s so much easier to hang out with people who remind you of your favorite person—yourself—than it is to figure out how to create an organic real community that has strength in its diversity.”

Yet the exact initiatives and priorities that Khurana will undertake as dean are yet to be determined. In a phone interview Wednesday, Khurana did not specify what issues or policies he might focus on, saying he would "have to have a sense of where different issues are."

Still, his colleagues said they are confident in Khurana’s commitment to bringing an open mind to the office.

Former Dean of Student Life Suzy M. Nelson, who co-chaired the alcohol policy committee with Khurana, wrote in an email that the incoming dean “has a wonderfully collaborative leadership style, listens well, and cares deeply about the student experience.”

Others described the incoming dean’s leadership style as transparent and rational.

"[He is] the sort of person I think we need as Dean of the College," said Classics professor Richard F. Thomas. “He seems to be somebody who listens, who forms his views according to the evidence.”

Gulati, too, said that he thinks Khurana would excel in his new role.

"With passion and purpose, there's nothing that you cannot get done," Gulati said. “He brings a tremendous can-do spirit.”

—Staff writer Dev A. Patel can be reached at dev.patel@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @dev_a_patel.

—Staff writer Steven R. Watros can be reached at steven.watros@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveWatros.