The Decline Of The Faculty

In 1991, Harvard's most famous dean of the Faculty wrote his final report to the University's governing boards.

Henry Rosovsky was concerned as he wrote the report, that professors no longer felt part of the Harvard community or lived up to an ideal of "citizenship" within the University.

"We have every right to assume that a Harvard professor's primary obligation is to the institution-essentially students and colleagues-and that all else is secondary," the dean wrote.

But, Rosovsky said, faculty were no longer honoring their "social contract" with the University. They were not spending time in Cambridge or making themselves available for students, he wrote.

Today, the problem Rosovsky noted in 1991 is even worse, professors say.

Despite faculty committees intended to oversee nearly every issue at Harvard from athletics to the core curriculum, many faculty are not plugged in to students life or even to the programs their own committees oversee.

Professors feel tied to their individual fields of study, or the scholarly plaudits of the outside world, not to the University or its students.

"There's a saying,' every tub on its own bottom,' that characterizes the strong autonomy of the faculty," says Baird Professor of Science Dudley R. Herschbach. "As members of a would-wide community, our first allegiances are often to a field of research."

The result is an ever-expanding role for the University's central administration, and increasing autonomy for programs nominally overseen by professors as part of their service to the University community.

When faculty abdicate their responsibilities, some say, the sad result can be badly-run programs with little or no supervision.

And without a strong faculty voice in the University's overall governance, the teachers and scholars who make Harvard a university may lose their representation in its affairs.

"The University is losing its cohesion and the power is distinctly shifting to the administration," says Ford Professor of Social Sciences Emeritus David Riesman '34.

The Decline of community

Rosovsky is not the only one to have noted a decline in the faculty's feeling of community membership or citizenship.

"Very few professors today are willing to give Harvard more than they take," says Harvey C. Mansfield Jr. '53, Kenan professor of government.

Former Dean of the Faculty Franklin L. Ford, who is McLean professor of ancient and modern history, says it is "much more difficult to find faculty who are willing to take on important tasks" today than it was during his time as dean.

Faculty seem to have less and less interest in their historic role of governing the College.

Apathy has been so great for the last few years that the Faculty Council, which approves the dockets sent to the full Faculty, has had to fill out its ranks with its own nominees. Not enough faculty members suggested candidates.

Herschbach says the tiny turnout for Faculty Council elections shows that faculty members are becoming less interested in asserting their own authority over University governance.

"If they aren't active, power gradually moves away from professors," Herschbach says. "There is weakening commitment to feeling citizenship--for example, faculty meeting mean less today than they used to."

The power exerted by the full Faculty hasdeclined over the last 30 years, says Secretary ofthe Faculty John B. Fox Jr. '59. Once, the Facultywas engaged in more day-to-day governance, hesays.

But "If a faculty meeting agenda from the 1950swere presented now, there would be a revolt," hesays. "People don't want to talk about the detailsof College life anymore."

Several Explanations

Professors offer several explanations for thedecline in faculty citizenship and governingpower.

The University's increasingly global andcomplicated interests necessitate professionaladministrators, says Dean for UndergraduateEducation Lawrence Buell.

"University affairs are much more complex thanthey used to be," Buell says. "It's harder forinvolved in University affairs to fell that theyhave a good handle on how the institution worksglobally, and how it makes decision day-to-day andcrisis-to-crisis."

Herschbach says Harvard's burgeoningbureaucracy crowds out faculty for a share ofUniversity power.

"Harvard has an increasing number of 'civilservants,'" he says. "There is an infrastructureof deans and advisors that do a lot of things interms of detailed governance that faculty membersat smaller colleges do."

But other professors offer alternative reasonfor the decline of faculty power.

Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III says thedeclining sense of faculty responsibility may bedue to the rapid turnover in the professorialranks.

"There is certainly a decrease in thecollective consciousness of the faculty becausethere's been a tremendous turnover among facultymembers, especially in the last ten years," saysEpps, who has been a Harvard administrator sincethe early 1960s.

Epps says Harvard's tendency to tenure outsidefaculty members adds to the trend.

"Now people need time to find their place andtheir voice, especially since so many are comingfrom the outside and come here with a range ofcollegial experiences," the dean says. "These takea while to coalesce into a single consciousness."

"These days, when you go to the Faculty Clubyou see a lot of people you don't know," says DeanK. Whitla, director of the office of instructionalresearch and evaluation in the Faculty of Arts andSciences. "There needs to be another locus forfaculty."

The World outside

The decline in professors' feeling ofresponsibility for the University may also belinked to their increasing identification with theworld outside Harvard.

For instance, in response to a question aboutthe role of faculty in Harvard administration,Warburg Professor of Ecnomics Emeritus JohnKenneth Galbraith says he "would advise askingsomeone who was actually involved in thegovernance of this great University."

The famed professor's response is typical ofthe scholars without Riesman calls the"independent entrepreneurs": top faculty memberswhose plaudits come from achievements outside theUniversity, not within it.

"Extramural involvement often identifiesHarvard professors more than teaching does," hesays. "I've often thought that Logan Airport is avery important part of Harvard."

It is easier for professors to findgratification through their contacts withcolleagues at other institutions than by teachingfirst-year survey classes, for instance.

"Collegiality is weakened because, for aHarvard professor, the outside world offers a lotsof heady praise: awards, recognition, intellectualstimulation and the esteem of professionalcolleagues," Herschbach says. "Internally, thereis less of that praise to be found."

Some attribute the growing presence of these"entrepreneurs" to Harvard's methods ofrecruitment and granting tenure.

"In the system of how Harvard chooses itsprofessors, looking specifically for the best inthe world, there shouldn't be surprise when thoseprofessors maintain close ties to the outsideworld where they are expected to flourish withtheir expertise," says Clowes Professor of ScienceHenry Ehrenreich.

Mansfield blames the professors' externalidentification partially on a shift during thecharged period of the late 1960s, when professorsbegan seeing their role as more overtly political.

"The faculty had succeeded in convincing theUniversity administration that it should aim atthe improvement of society and not be so detachedfrom the outside world," Mansfield says.

These "entrepreneurial" professors, who aregrowing in number because of the increasing totheir work, outside Harvard than to students,Riesman says.

"It is not unusual for a professor to be neededand they're not around," he says. "What I call the`independent entrepreneur' is often characterizedby irresponsibility and an excessive lack ofcollegial concern."

The time many spend receiving awards orattending conferences might be better spenthelping students during reading period, Riesmansays.

"It's not just at Harvard, but it's asociety-wide issue, that people and professor nolonger sense their own personal responsiblity inmatters of general importance," he adds.

Smokescreen

While faculty committees allegedly oversee mostaspects of College life, in some case thegoverning role of these professors in little morethan an official smokescreen.

Passive faculty committees can often fail toreform programs that are not doing their job.

In the Expository Writing program, forinstance, the faculty committee responsible forgoverning its working meets only a year for lessthan two hours.

During recent years, while the facultycommittee was listening to briefings by outgoingExpos Director Richard C. Marius, Marius wasrunning the program into the ground.

Faculty members allegedly responsible foroverseeing Marius and the program were unaware ofits actual workings.

"I wish I could know more about the system so Icould respond more effectively [to questions],"Associate Professor of Music Graeme M. Boone saidlast semester. "I feel like I'm sort of on theedge of the knowledge."

With so little time each year to studyproblems, theF-9