Planning Group Releases Proposed Bylaws for a Faculty Senate at Harvard

The planning body for a University-wide faculty senate released proposed bylaws for the group on Friday, recommending a 43-member senate that would help advise Harvard’s central administration and governing boards on issues that cut across the University.

The proposal — which each of Harvard’s faculties will vote on sometime during the 2025-26 academic year — detailed the organizational structure of the senate and established that the body’s purpose would be to deliberate and advise University leadership, not set legislation.

The draft shows that, after months of discussion, the planning body endorsed a version of the faculty senate with comparatively weak substantive powers. At some universities, such as Stanford and Columbia, faculty senates have a legislative role in tasks like establishing curricula or drawing up faculty handbooks.

The decision means faculty may not face the uphill battle of trying to wrest powers from the University’s central administration. It is also a nod to the influence of Harvard’s individual faculties, many of which hold substantial legislative authority over academic affairs within their respective schools.

“One of the things that we were very clear about in the proposal is that the faculty senate doesn’t supersede the power and the authority of each school to regulate its own affairs,” said Harvard Kennedy School and Education School lecturer Timothy P. McCarthy ’93. “There will be school specific things that would not fall within the larger and broader purview of the faculty senate.”

The proposed bylaws stipulated that Harvard’s president and provost would be expected to regularly attend the senate’s meetings, which would take place at least three times per semester. University Professor Danielle S. Allen, one of the driving forces behind the faculty senate effort, said both Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 and Provost John F. Manning ’82 had provided feedback on the proposals and were “very appreciative” of the body’s work.

“We’re motivated by the clear need for partnership between faculty and University leaders, and our goal is to improve communication, shared understanding, and cooperative governance across schools and with university administration,” Allen said.

The proposal includes allocations of seats for each of Harvard’s schools. The senate would consist of 12 seats for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences; six for the Harvard Medical School, including the Dental School; four each for the School of Public Health, Kennedy School, Business School, and Law School; and three each for the Design School, Divinity School, and Education School.

The planning body devised the proposed bylaws after research on the history of faculty senate efforts at Harvard and conversations with senate members at nine peer institutions, including Duke University, the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and Stanford.

The proposal of bylaws marks an important milestone for the faculty senate effort, which has now far outlasted similar initiatives. An FAS committee convened in 1972 proposed the creation of a University Senate with advisory powers, but then-President Derek Bok declined to adopt its recommendations. Other flashes of interest in creating a senate — including in 2012 and 2015 — fizzled out over the summer or after skepticism from top administrators.

The latest drive was launched in April 2024 amid growing doubts among faculty that the University’s governing boards could effectively steer Harvard through crisis.

The turmoil at the time revolved around turnover in Massachusetts Hall during a year that saw the resignation of former University President Claudine Gay, and her replacement by Garber, as fury over Oct. 7 and the war in Gaza gripped campus. While those issues have by now largely faded into the background, Harvard has only faced more existential threats since: attempts to ban its international students, massive funding cuts, and a budget squeeze that has been forcing the University to overhaul its finances.

The Trump administration’s assault on higher education, the planning body wrote in its proposal, has only made the push for a faculty senate feel more urgent.

While the planning body was conducting its work, the report read, “developments both on and off campus, particularly relating to the new U.S. presidential administration’s posture toward higher education, underscored the urgency of reforming Harvard’s governance.”

Allen said that representation for faculties was a key point of discussion when the planning body was devising the proposed bylaws. HGSE professor Julie A. Reuben, a planning body delegate, said the group ultimately decided to allocate senators based roughly on the size of schools’ faculty.

Under the proposed bylaws, all faculties with at least one hundred voting members would receive four senators, and those that house an additional school — like the Medical School — would receive two extra seats. All other schools receive three senators.

“We spent a fair bit of time thinking about the Medical School, which also has the Dental School within it,” Reuben said. “We came up with a plan that was basically reflective of size, but not completely proportional.”

The proposal stipulated that senators would serve three-year terms and detailed office roles for senators, which would involve more administrative work and be held by senators for one or two years. The officer positions included a secretary, treasurer, parliamentarian, chair, and vice chair — a position that a senator would hold for one year before becoming the chair of the senate.

Elections for the officers would be held annually or biannually, depending on the position. But the proposal said that individual faculties could choose whether to select their senators by election or by random. David C. Lamberth, a planning body delegate from Harvard Divinity School, said that the school may apportion one of its three seats to a non-tenured faculty member.

“In terms of the value of better representation of the perspectives of the faculty, at least coming from my own faculty, it would be really valuable to have one seat that was open to those people,” Lamberth said.

Included in the proposal were three case studies detailing how a faculty senate might respond to challenges or crises at the University. They included an instance of alleged plagiarism, a hurricane in Cambridge, and proposals for establishing Harvard campuses abroad.

The purpose of the studies, Allen said, was to test whether the body could “function strategically” and address concerns about whether a faculty senate would delay existing decision-making processes.

But the case studies imagined a slow and methodical body that places a heavy emphasis on procedural norms. In one example, after a hurricane strikes Harvard during move-in week in 2040, the senate’s executive committee engages in weeks of deliberations before the senate first gathers as a full body on a Zoom call, more than one month after landfall.

The work of the faculty senate will likely evolve as professors review the proposed bylaws, but planning body senators said they are quickly identifying potential use cases.

McCarthy, the HKS and HGSE lecturer who helped chair meetings of the planning body, said the body would focus on issues that affect multiple schools and would hopefully become “a sounding board and a thought partner in University-wide challenges.”

HSPH professor Meredith B. Rosenthal, another planning body delegate, said she expected that addressing academic issues — an increasingly hot topic on campus, especially at Harvard College — would be at the “core” of the faculty senate’s work.

Topics might include “common issues around grade inflation, around whether Harvard students should have a public service requirement — those kinds of questions that would cut across multiple schools and really be in line with the academic mission,” Rosenthal added.

If the bylaws are approved this academic year, faculties would submit their plans for holding elections during the 2026-27 academic year. The inaugural elections for the senate would be held in spring 2027, and the body would meet for the first time in fall 2027.

Correction: October 31, 2025, at 9:22 a.m.

A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the proposed faculty senate has 34 members. In fact, the proposed bylaws call for a 43-member senate.

—Staff writer William C. Mao can be reached at william.mao@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @williamcmao.

—Staff writer Veronica H. Paulus can be reached at veronica.paulus@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @VeronicaHPaulus.