If in Doubt, Create a Faculty Committee

"The committee is Harvard's digestive system," a Nieman fellow observed the other day. "A problem arises; a committee swallows it up."

If that analogy is accurate, then many committees have swallowed--perhaps digested--a lot of problems at this University over the past two years.

Committees, and sub-committees of committees, have been everywhere, taking up an incredible complex of issues. The most prominent has been the Faculty's Special Committee on Recruitment and Retention of Faculty, which turned in a 119-page report last month--replete with 15 tables of research data--that recommended, among other things, the abolition of the instructor's position at Harvard and increased pay scales for junior faculty.

In addition to that committee, the past year has seen the creation of or reports from: a) a committee to study the future of Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, b) a committee on the condition of Harvard's existing athletic facilities, c) a committee on the future of the Harvard House system, d) a committee on creating a program of Afro-American studies at Harvard, e) a committee on the uses of computers in Harvard instruction, and f) a sub-committee of the established Committee on Houses which took up the impact the opening of a 10th Harvard House in 1969 will have on the existing Houses and on off-campus living at Harvard.

And this list includes just the more publicized committees of the year. Many more have been created to take up problems of less concern to the general Harvard public.

The question of why the committee remains. Can't Harvard's established offices solve their problems by themselves? What does a committee do that they can't do, and why have committees been resorted to more often in the past few years than ever before?

Unlike many universities, Harvard has a long-standing tradition of faculty control over the educational process. This is the spiritual strength of Harvard, but potentially a source of administrative weakness.

250 Amateurs

The tradition theoretically means that a collection of chemists and critics, sociologists and historians, governs a complex of offices and institutions that comprise the university. One senior faculty member, speaking informally, summed up the situation last week, noting, "The faculty is not trained as a legislative body. It can't meet more than once a month." At any given meeting of the Faculty, there will be perhaps "250 disorganized amateurs," grappling with issues, many of them purely administrative, that they either do not care to trouble with or feel themselves incapable of handling well.

This is where the committee comes in. "If the committee is representative, when in doubt, go along with the committee," the senior professor said, speaking for most of the Faculty's attitude on issues which come up at meetings.

Two Kinds

Specifically, this is where two kinds of Harvard committee come in--standing committees and special committees. There are, at present, 37 standing committees within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. They exist, in general, to maintain those parts of Harvard that either cross the boundaries of academic departments--or are not closely related to actual instruction at all.

The standing Committee on History and Literature is an example of the first type; the standing Committee on Houses is an example of the second. There is a standing Committee on Dramatics (it administers the Loeb Drama Center). There is a standing Committee on the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Chemical Physics. There is a standing Committee on Graduate and Career Plans (it administers the Office of Graduate and Career Plans). There is the very influential Committee on Educational Policy. Standing committees run the Carpenter Center of Visual Arts, the athletic facilities, and the Bureau of Study Counsel.

Standing committees "rejuvenate" themselves each year, as Dean Ford puts it, by dropping wearier members and signing on new ones. Occasionally, a committee outlives its usefulness and the Faculty, on Ford's recommendation, votes to dissolve it.

This is what happened to one-time standing committees on Advanced Standing and Freshman Seminars. Once those programs ceased being new phenomena, ceased having the initial shake-down troubles new programs have, their special committees became unnecessary. The Committee on Educational Policy absorbed the functions of the Advanced Standing committee and the Committee on General Education absorbed those of the Freshman Seminars committee.

During the past year, one standing committee was dissolved--the Committee on Regional Studies. The most recently created standing committee is the Committee on Folklore and Mythology, established by the Faculty in the Spring of 1967 to award undergraduate degrees in the field.

Crossing Lines

The number of standing committees generally has increased in recent years, according to Dean Ford, mainly because more groups of Faculty members have been coming forward with ideas for new instructional programs that cross the lines of existing Harvard departments. Folklore and Mythology is the latest example.

It is the special committees, however, that have dominated Harvard news for the past two years in particular. They too are more numerous than ever before, according to Ford.

Special committees get started in three different ways, according to Ford:

* A group of Faculty members in a sense constitute themselves into one and asked Ford and the Faculty to legitimize the group. This is the case of a small special committee on Ukrainian Studies. Such a committee may eventually become a standing committee and begin a degree program in an area like that.

* Some area of the Faculty's jurisdiction is due for a review and a special committee is created to undertake the job for the entire Faculty. The Faculty has, for example, just created a special committee to review Harvard's Development Advisory Service, a wing of the University that sends teams of economists to underdeveloped countries requesting a little intellectual foreign aid. This review may take several years; when it is finished, and its report in, the committee will be dissolved.

* A problem or new set of proposals arises and a special committee is created to investigate and recommend appropriate action by the entire Faculty. This would include the Committee on Recruitment and Retention of Faculty, the Committee on Afro-American Studies, and the Committee on the future of Harvard's overcrowded undernourished Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. These committees usually have an unspecified but accepted time limit of perhaps one term or one year in which to report back to Ford and the Faculty.

Most of these special committees are needed. Ford maintains, because the problems they tackle simply do not fall within the sphere of any of the 37 standing committees.

"It can get to be a headache," Ford says. "There are times I'm almost nostalgic for a simpler time when it was clear who had the power (to take up new issues and problems)."

The reason for the rising number of special committees lately is a "matter of history" to Ford. Traditional committees, he says, have not been able to cope with the increasing number of problems and proposals in recent years that cross or are outside existing administrative spheres of authority.

Special committees serve other purposes too. They are the best way to get problems and issues "out in the open," according to Ford, away from the bowels of University Hall. He says the increased willingness (and demand, it might be added) of students to be heard on such issues has had something to do with it. A special committee is free to take testimony from both students and other interested faculty members while studying its particular problem. Many of the special committees of the past year used that freedom.

Some cynics around Harvard have claimed that Ford has used special committees as a means of legitimizing actions he and his personal staff had already agreed upon. Faculty committees have been "mandated", they say, to come in with the already agreed upon recommendations.

Ford denies this--mostly. He can and does quickly cite Paul Doty's special committee on the future of General Education at Harvard, whose report three years ago surprised many people, and led to extended Faculty debate and alterations--unlike the usual Faculty rubber stamp of committee recommendations.

The Committee on Recruitment and Retention of Faculty also "thought up a lot of things I hadn't thought of," Ford says. He thinks its recommendations may not have smooth, quick sailing through the Faculty either. Some senior faculty members, he says, do not like the committee's "implied emphasis on fighting to get junior faculty."

But Ford does concede that some special committees he has created through the Faculty do serve to make the "community aware of things that stay cooped up in the Dean's office." Special committees and their reports legitimize, publicize, and hopefully popularize proposals that the dean might have been able to propose without them.

Aware of Cynicism

Ford has been aware of prevalent cynicism toward committees in general, and says it has often proven a problem for him to convince persons that he was not setting up a committee so as not to do something. He says he heard this when he decided upon the committee on the uses of computers in instruction. That committee's report this year will have an initial pay-off next Fall when four computer consoles are installed in the Houses and Harvard Yard for undergraduate use.

* * * *

Once a special committee is decided upon, the problem becomes staffing it. For Ford, the first question is a chairman. He says John T. Dunlop, David A. Wells Professor of Political Economy, was an "ideal choice" to chair this year's Committee on Recruitment and Retention of Faculty. Dunlop had just finished a term as chairman of the Economics Department, his field--economics--was a large, central one in the University, and his specialty within the field--manpower and labor relations--was relevant to the committee's topic.

Dunlop's initial reaction when asked why he agreed to chair the committee was, "I was out of my mind." But he quickly added that it was just a case of, "Franklin asked me to do it and I agreed to do it." Dunlop was on sabbatical this year, and his work as chairman cut into his own leave time.

In most cases, Ford draws up his own list of possible members for the special committee, shows them to the selected chairman for concurrence, and then asks them to join. This is what happened with Dunlop's committee, for example.

There are those members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences who will serve on committees and those who won't. One very well-known professor here is reported to have intentionally acted as stupid as possible on committees he has been on just to keep from being asked to join others.

"One tends to suspect that," Ford says of such reported behavior, although he adds he himself knows of no professor who is guilty of it.

More typical perhaps is a senior professor who says he has avoided serving on committees as much as possible during his career here, but every now and then agrees to be on one, considering it a sort of dues for being on the Harvard Faculty.

Naturally Good

"Some men are just naturally good committee members--I mean that in a serious sense," Ford says. These men tend to be on many committees, more than they themselves may prefer.

"Occasionally, someone will point out the number of committees he's been on and say, 'for God's sake, do give him a chance to do something else."

The composition of the Dunlop committee was extraordinary. Besides Dunlop, its members are Herchel C. Baker, professor of English, Merle Fainsod, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and director of the University Library, Oscar Handlin, Charles Warren Professor of American History, George B. Kistiakowsky, Abbott and James Lawrence Professor of Chemistry, Edward S. Mason, University Professor, and J. C. Street, professor of Physics. It is a high-powered collection indeed.

Dunlop agrees that the attempt here was for a "blue-ribbon" panel, whose recommendations--which obviously would lead to major changes if accepted--would carry strong weight with the Faculty.

The Dunlop committee's composition also reflects, on a really high plane, the general effort for committee memberships on broad issues to be balanced among the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities.

Ford says he prefers special committees to be fairly small, that is, between seven and nine members. The largest committee now going has "something like 15" members, he says. Large committees have a difficulty rounding up their members for meetings.

Once a committee's report is in to the Faculty, its members--particularly its chairman--may have the additional task of explaining and/or defending its proposals before the Faculty or other bodies with power to act on them.

Generally, however, a committee's recommendations are accepted with out much fuss, unless there are physical (i.e., financial) limitations present. Recommendations get by easily for the same reason committees exist--most Faculty members do not feel competent to dispute proposals by colleagues who have devoted time and effort to them.

Ford feels that one reason for the Doty report's problems in the Faculty was that "just about everyone in the community thinks he knows what Gen Ed is." It's a "gut issue" around here, he says.

Committees have a bad reputation in most circles, but they appear to be one of Harvard's strengths. They allow the University to adapt fairly quickly when confronted with new challenges that established machinery has never coped with before.

"We're rather lucky," Ford says of Harvard's experience, constantly increasing, with committees. Other schools have had not great success with them, he says. He credits Harvard's long tradition of Faculty control. That tradition is so strong here, that Faculty members--if not deliriously happy to be tapped for committee membership, do at least recognize it as a part of their functions here, and perform, when asked, with dedication and competence.

A camel, they say, is a horse made by committee. Harvard is made by committees, and seems to be one of the best-running camels around