As HKS Dean, Jeremy Weinstein Courts the Faculty

Updated May 1, 2025, at 2:40 p.m.

When Jeremy Weinstein arrived at the Harvard Kennedy School in July 2024, the first thing he did was meet with each member of the school’s nearly 200-person faculty in their office.

Before making sweeping changes, the new dean set out to get the faculty on his side, establishing personal relationships, tacking on catered hors d’oeuvres to faculty meetings, and directing the creation of a new faculty lounge in the school’s Littauer building.

“I felt like I got to know him personally, and he really spent the time to hear about my passions and the things that I’m interested in,” HKS professor Linda J. Bilmes said of her conversation with Weinstein.

If Weinstein’s goal was to ingratiate himself with a rarely satisfied faculty, it seems to have worked.

More than a dozen HKS professors had only resounding praise for the first nine months of Weinstein’s tenure, saying the dean has sought out and expanded pathways for faculty engagement in the school’s future.

According to Bilmes, faculty meetings have become more interactive and often include lengthy comment periods. Another professor said faculty are asked to use QR codes to add to word clouds on HKS culture.

“It’s not in my nature to be laudatory of anybody,” said HKS professor Tarek E. Masoud, who leads the school’s hotly-debated Middle East Dialogues. “Usually I try to smash idols, not build them up. But this guy — I just haven’t seen anything that makes me anything other than impressed and appreciative of him.”

“It must be hard for you guys to write this story because typically when you write a story or a profile of somebody, you would have some negative things,” Masoud added. “I don’t think he’s put a foot wrong.”

A New Kind of Dean?

Weinstein arrived at HKS in July on the heels of a school year that left the University reeling and divided. He also took the reins from a predecessor infamous for attracting controversy and alienating faculty.

Two years earlier, former HKS Dean Douglas W. Elmendorf had infuriated faculty by vetoing a fellowship offer for former Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth only to reverse course after pressure from faculty members — who “pretty much unanimously” supported Roth, Carr Center director Mathias Risse wrote at the time.

At the same time, Elmendorf was also facing uproar from affiliates over his decision to terminate misinformation expert Joan M. Donovan’s Technology and Social Change project. Donovan left the school shortly after, telling The Crimson at the time that “an institution is only as good as its leadership.” Both controversies drew calls for Elmendorf’s resignation.

Weinstein arrived at HKS determined not to follow in his predecessor’s footsteps. But as he set about repairing relationships internally, his focus necessarily shifted to an external threat — the ever-escalating conflict between Harvard and the Trump Administration.

In spite of his inexperience, coming to Harvard without an administrative post, Weinstein managed to be proactive in tackling the challenges of the political moment, faculty said.

Just six months into his tenure, Weinstein visited the West Bank and Israel to recruit Israeli and Palestinian students and re-engage Palestinian alumni. The trip was praised by both HKS alumni from the region and Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Palestinian Bias, which touted it for “fostering respectful dialogue and engagement with diverse perspectives” in a Tuesday report.

And while the rest of the University looks for ways to cut back on spending in the face of a $3.2 billion funding cut, Weinstein is adamant that HKS will continue to sponsor cutting-edge research. In early April, Weinstein even launched a new fund — a competitive grants program — offering up to $20,000 for research projects “responsive to the moment.”

“He’s somebody who’s trying to deal with a very tumultuous present while helping us steer a course into an uncertain future,” Masoud said. “Very tough job, but he’s the guy to do it.”

Listening Mode

Weinstein has big ambitions for the government school. In February, the dean announced publicly that he was engaged in a year-long effort to review the “mission, offerings, and aspirations” of HKS with the goal of creating a 10-year “vision and strategy.”

As part of that year-long review, Weinstein coordinated five faculty task forces to investigate questions about the future of the school and its values.

“It’s a very thoughtful, participatory kind of process,” Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation Director Archon Fung said. “I think it’s a good approach to take a breath and try to think more deeply and long term about these questions.”

Though Weinstein is an active presence on campus — hosting monthly breakfasts with students, watching JFK Jr. forums from the balcony, and mingling in the cafeteria — several students said they couldn’t get a read on the dean. Some said it is unclear when Weinstein’s listening tour will end and decisive action will be taken.

“It’s a relatively long-term position, but also to have spent a year just getting one’s feet wet — I think there is this hunger, especially at this moment, to say, ‘When have you gotten to know enough?’” said Jake Green, a first-year master’s in public policy student on the Kennedy School Student Government.

Mid-career master’s in public administration student Monik Bhatta said Weinstein’s rhetoric, even if not accompanied by action, had fostered a “sense of assurance” among many international students as the Trump Administration threatens their presence on campus.

“There are students who feel really reassured by even what Dean Weinstein has been doing, or the email that he sent out,” Bhatta said. “He’s not willing to capitulate, I think — which, from my understanding, was what the previous dean was.”

Even as Weinstein works to make himself a resource to students and faculty on campus, the dean is keeping up a frenetic rate of travel. He commutes back to California on weekends to visit his family, multiple faculty told The Crimson, and only recently sold his Bay Area home.

And in the past five months alone, Weinstein has toured Asia, visited the Middle East, and met with alumni in London.

Green said the dean’s frequent travel has not made him “inaccessible” to students. Another HKS student said that because Weinstein’s family is not in Cambridge, the dean seems to spend extra time at the school during the week.

“If I send him an email at 1 a.m., I get a response at 1:15,” Masoud said. “And knowing that he’s doing that while also traveling back every weekend, or most weekends, to be back with his family — I mean, the load that that must involve is fairly intense.”

If anything, Masoud said he was worried the dean might be doing too good of a job.

“One of my concerns is that we’re going to be looking for a president imminently, and then he'll get sucked up into that instead of serving as the Kennedy School’s dean for the decade that we need him to,” Masoud said.

—Staff writer Elise A. Spenner can be reached at elise.spenner@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X at @EliseSpenner.

—Staff writer Tanya J. Vidhun can be reached at tanya.vidhun@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @tanyavidhun.