Bok Issues Annual President's Report

Derek C. Bok has revived the president’s annual report, assessing his year in Harvard’s highest office and looking at the University’s future in a 34-page letter set to be released this morning.

The “President’s Report,” as it is officially titled, had been neglected for over a decade, last appearing when former President Neil L. Rudenstine released a report covering 1993 to 1995 that focused on diversity at Harvard.

Bok said in an interview last week that he had no grand plans to revive the tradition.

“Someone told me, ‘Gee, they haven’t been doing that around here.’ ” Bok said. “But by that time I’d written it. I couldn’t burn it or throw it away, so I submitted it.”

He added that he had “no stake” in deciding whether President-elect Drew G. Faust would continue to write and file an annual report.

In his report, which was addressed to the alumni Board of Overseers, Bok reflects on the major projects of his year, citing in particular the completion of the curricular review, the continued momentum on Harvard’s expansion into Allston, and the establishment of the Harvard University Science and Engineering Committee, which is charged with encouraging interdisciplinary scientific research.

Bok’s assessment captures a university in transition. He writes that the curricular review’s recommendations “represent the most comprehensive group of proposals to improve our undergraduate program in more than a hundred years,” and that the new mechanism for making decisions about science on a University-wide basis marks “a major departure from longstanding practice.”

Having gotten a first-hand look at the University’s decision-making process over the past year, Bok uses the rest of his letter to confront the central questions facing the University as he prepares to leave office on June 30.

Regarding University governance, Bok treads a middle ground between advocating for a more efficient, centralized administrative system and arguing that decision-making power should rest with those who best know the issues.

Bok writes that in giving individual faculties autonomy, “the University has given responsibility to those most knowledgeable about the different fields and programs,” but that excessive decentralization can result in costly inefficiency.

More broadly, Bok writes, the decentralization reflects schools’ willingness to “pay a premium to preserve control over functions that affect their welfare and that of their members.”

Bok also reflects on ways to improve teaching at Harvard—long a pet project of his, as illustrated by the center for teaching and learning that bears his name.

Bok calls the recent report on teaching issued by FAS “splendid,” but he criticizes professors’ “passive resistance” to efforts to assess the quality of teaching and learning.

The final section of the report centers on finding and training strong academic leaders, highlighting a timely concern as Faust prepares to guide four new deans when she takes office in just over three weeks.

—Staff writer Laurence H. M. Holland can be reached at lholland@fas.harvard.edu.