Harvard Language Programs Struggle to Maintain Staffing Levels Amid Hiring Freeze

Harvard programs that rely heavily on non-tenure track instructors are facing uncertainty as they look to fill impending vacancies amid Harvard’s hiring freeze.

In particular, programs are struggling to retain or replace faculty members whose positions are under time caps, which limit the amount of time they can be employed at Harvard to two, three, or eight years. The cancellation of faculty searches across the school has made it more difficult for programs to replace time-capped faculty members whose contracts are set to expire.

Course offerings in some of Harvard’s smaller language programs, which often rely on non-tenure track instructors, have been left in limbo as the deadline for course registration approaches Wednesday night.

Harvard’s programs for African Language, Slavic Languages & Literatures, and Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations are all slated to lose instructors in less commonly taught language programs: Amharic, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, and Armenian.

South Asian Studies also stands to lose a preceptor of Indo-Persian literature, though the instructor, Hajnalka Kovacs, said the department has been looking for ways to retain her. Parimal G. Patil, the South Asian Studies department chair, did not respond to requests for comment.

Ethnicity, Migration, Rights will be unable to offer four Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies courses that it had originally planned due to a canceled lecturer search, according to EMR chair Raquel Vega-Durán. Vega-Durán added that EMR will not lose any lecturers this year, but the hiring freeze has impacted their future plans nonetheless.

University spokespeople declined to comment on how the hiring freeze will impact teaching and on the conditions in which exceptions to the freeze would be granted. Instead, they referred The Crimson to University President Alan M. Garber ’76’s initial statement on the hiring freeze, which said it would be in place through the end of the semester and reconsidered in the future.

Lisa Gulesserian is currently the only Armenian preceptor in the NELC department, but a request for an extension on her appointment — which expires at the end of June — was not approved by the Office for Faculty Affairs.

Jay M. Harris, NELC’s chair, wrote in a statement that it is unclear which Armenian courses will be available in the upcoming academic year.

“We hope and expect to offer instruction, but cannot definitively say we will be able to at this time,” he wrote.

Though departments are permitted to extend time caps for less commonly taught languages by up to two years, Gulesserian’s appointment was ineligible. The policy only permits departments to extend instructors’ appointments if a “timely and thorough national search” had failed — and, because of the hiring freeze, a search had not run in the first place.

Gulesserian wrote in a statement that the Office for Faculty Affairs suggested that, as a solution, the department hire a teaching assistant in Armenian to temporarily fill the gap. Both Harris and Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesperson James M. Chisholm declined to comment on whether the OFA had made such a recommendation.

TA positions, which can be renewed on a semesterly basis for up to eight years, are part-time roles. African Language Program manager Bojana Coulibaly said they have been able to continue hiring TAs amid the freeze.

The African Language Program is staffed almost entirely by TAs, and will be losing its sole instructor in the Ge’ez script. As a result, Coulibaly said Ge’ez will not be offered next academic year.

Steven J. Clancy, the director of the Slavic Language Program, wrote in an email that it is “unlikely” that Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian courses will be offered next year after a current preceptor leaves.

Harvard’s academic workers union — which represents 3,600 non-tenure-track faculty across the University — has been working to eliminate time caps in negotiations for its first contract. Though the University offered to roll back time caps for preceptors in February, it has repeatedly rejected a proposed moratorium on time caps for the duration of bargaining.

At a March 24 bargaining session, both parties reserved time for a question-and-answer session about the hiring freeze’s impact on non-tenure-track faculty.

Bargaining committee member J. Gregory Given told The Crimson last month that union representatives had sought clarification on hiring freeze exceptions, research funding, and non-citizen worker protections.

In response, the University had “very few answers,” he said, though he added that “the fact that the bargaining team had few answers does not mean that administrators at Harvard don’t have answers to these questions.”

University spokespeople have declined to comment on Given’s remarks.

—Staff writer Hugo C. Chiasson can be reached at hugo.chiasson@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @HugoChiassonn.

—Staff writer Amann S. Mahajan can be reached at amann.mahajan@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @amannmahajan.