Harvard Ed School Affiliates Talk Hopes, Expectations For New Dean

Harvard Graduate School of Education students and faculty said the school needs a dean who will value global education and promote interdisciplinary collaboration, after HGSE Dean Bridget Terry Long announced she would resign at the end of this academic year.

HGSE Academic Dean Martin R. West said the search process for Long’s successor is still awaiting guidance from the Harvard’s Office of the Provost.

“We know that there will be a faculty committee that will be advisory to the search, and there will be many opportunities for staff and students to provide input,” he said.

West pointed to increasing international interest in HGSE programs meant a need for increased capacity to support students both inside and outside of the classroom.

In particular, West said the school’s faculty and courses must speak “not just to education issues in the U.S., but to education issues globally.”

Harvard Professor of Education Meira Levinson said the next dean must chart a positive course for HGSE’s future during a time when the value of education globally has been jeopardized.

“I do think it is a moment in which faculty, staff, and students, both individually and collectively, have a big role to play in understanding why schools and universities and educational institutions are under such attack,” Levinson said.

She highlighted the importance of understanding “what we can do to help further a positive and inclusive vision of the roles and policies and practices of educational institutions moving forward.”

HGSE doctoral student Ellis E. Reid V said the next dean must be able to speak clearly and comprehensively in the face of multiple “threats to democracy coming from all different angles.”

Reid specifically called out the tensions on campus over the Israel-Palestine war.

“Being clear about how the values of the institution, like what those mean for us and our degrees, seems important,” Reid said.

As Harvard navigates a historic crisis, master’s student Jordan M.A. Andrews said he hopes the HGSE administration will take into account the experiences of minority students and make space for them to reflect on the University’s changing landscape.

Andrews spoke about students’ reactions to the tumultuous tenure of former Harvard President Claudine Gay, who was the first Black person to lead Harvard.

“Especially with President Gay’s resignation, we held Zoom calls or phone calls to kind of just sit together and collectively react and collectively address how much it was impacting us,” Andrews added.

Andrews highlighted the intensified impact on students of color following the announcement that Long — the first Black woman to lead HGSE — would be stepping down not long after Gay departed her own post at the helm of the University.

“The way in which Harvard treats its people in power definitely is being watched very closely by students of color,” Andrews said.

Ariel Tan, a doctoral student at HGSE, said she that the Ed School’s next dean will prioritize outreach and interaction between HGSE and other Harvard graduate schools in order to provide future educators and leaders with a more comprehensive view of the field.

“I think the nature of this school needs interdisciplinary collaboration,” Tan said.

Alia Qatarneh, who is pursuing a doctorate degree in education leadership at HGSE, said the next dean should facilitate a similar kind of coordination between the ed school’s Ed.L.D and Ph.D. programs, which focus on practice and research, respectively.

Qatarneh explained that practitioners “looking to implement policy” must be able to work in closely with quantitative researchers.

“I feel that our trajectories are very parallel,” she said. “There isn’t a nice nexus between the Ed.L.D experience and the Ph.D. experience.”

Still, Qatarneh said, “there’s passion on both sides.”

The school’s next leader must “leverage that passion here at HGSE, to manifest, and actually changing the world,” she added.

—Staff writer Katie B. Tian can be reached at katie.tian@thecrimson.com.