Over-'Committeed' & Under Pressure: Harvard's Faculty Churns out Policy One Meeting at a Time

If it can't be decided in a meeting, then it probably can't be decided--at Harvard anyway.

As often as not, academic policy is hammered out around small conference tables in departments across campus, in a labyrinthine maze of monthly and bi-monthly, ad hoc and standing, search and sub-committee meetings.

Due to Harvard's age-old governing system, which cedes wide swaths of power to individual schools within the University and to departments within those schools, Faculty members have wide latitude in determining administrative action.

And while Faculty members appreciate the voice they are given in shaping University policy, some say it comes at the expense of precious teaching, advising and research time--not to mention their private lives.

Over-Committeed?

While Harvard Faculty have always been asked to pull their weight on the University's various committees, some say they've been asked to pull just a little bit harder in recent years.

"I've had peaks of activity," says Cabot Professor of English Literature Werner Sollors. "This is one of the most heavy peaks I've had."

By his account he serves on 15 committees--from the college admissions committee to search committees for the English department to the occasional tenure ad hoc committee for other universities. Sollors also juggles a joint appointment with the Afro-American Studies Department, of which he is the former chair.

Sollors says he spends an average of two hours a month on each of his committees. That means a whopping 30 hours a month in committee meetings--almost one additional work week--a level he terms "unsustainable."

For Sollors the heavy committee workload at times comes at the cost of his non-academic pursuits.

"Sometimes you cut into your private life," he says. "You can't read the newspaper or go swimming."

Some professors maintain that their harried schedules demand that they cram all of their personal research and writing goals into the short summer months.

"The actual work for the University is so overwhelming that it's very hard to do anything during term time but teach and perform your University service," says Porter University Professor Helen H. Vendler. "It is rare to have a weekend to begin an article or anything like that during term time."

"If you do your work correctly and responsibly, you find yourself with a very long work week," she adds.

To be sure, not all Faculty members shoulder such a heavy committee load as Sollors and Vendler. Kenan Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield '53 believes he's found the secret to avoiding committee duties.

" If you want to avoid meetings, become a conservative because you won't get invited so often," he quips.

Mansfield notes that he doesn't currently serve on any Faculty-wide committees, limiting his service to three departmental committees as well as several dissertation committees. He is also a regular attendee of full Faculty meetings, a forum he frequently uses to address his colleagues.

But others say an invitation to join one committee can often spawn other requests.

"Some people tend to like being on committees and they are good at it," says Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Carol J. Thompson. "They are their own worst enemies."

It is the ease with which they say "yes" that sends these Faculty members to meeting rooms day in and day out.

"People who are good at saying no serve on considerably fewer committees," says Sven Beckert, assistant professor of history.

The Harvard Stamp of Approval

Harvard isn't the only tug on many professors' time. From advising the president to commenting on CNN, few outside organizations aren't pleased to have a Harvard professor's expertise.

"Unless they try hard to avoid it [professors here] end up on more committees outside the institution than faculty at less prestigious schools," wrote Leverett House Master and Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics Howard Georgi in an e-mail message from California where he was attending a Department of Energy committee meeting.

While Georgi noted that many top research institutions experience the phenomenon, there is nothing quite like the Harvard name.

"Many times faculty members say coming here puts them in the limelight, even more than at Princeton or Stanford," Thompson says. "[There are] more invitations, more media want to talk to them. You've got the stamp of approval because you're at Harvard."

Faculty members also find the University name can bring demands from odd quarters.

The Clinton impeachment, for instance, thrust many Harvard professors into the forefront of the national discourse.

"When the impeachment thing happened people called from the remotest corners of this country wanting to know about the impeachment of Andrew Johnson," says Beckert, who specializes in American history.

According to Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles, the professors who take on the most outside of Harvard are often the same people most engaged within Harvard's gates.

"It isn't a question of outside versus inside, it's simply an issue of the drain on our most energetic faculty," Knowles wrote in an e-mail message.

Working for Nothing...

For junior Faculty members, the non-teaching time commitments can be even more onerous, taking time away from research they desperately need to pursue tenure appointments.

According to some, Harvard's storied reticence to promote from within only serves to decrease the junior Faculty's willingness to sacrifice professional growth for fair Harvard.

"Some people ask why they should work for the institution if it's not going to benefit them in any way," says Beckert.

Beckert, who is active on history departmental committees, says that many of his junior Faculty colleagues avoid the boardroom. The thankless work of the committee simply doesn't help get tenure.

"Nobody cares if you were on a committee at Harvard when you apply for a job somewhere else," Beckert says. "It might also be a liability within [Harvard]."

Beckert notes that no Harvard junior Faculty member has been promoted in American History since 1957. When he joined the department two and half years ago, there were four junior Faculty members who outranked him. He's now the most senior of the junior Faculty in his discipline.

And senior Faculty members say they recognize their juniors' reluctance to serve.

"We try to protect the junior Faculty. They're usually not on University-wide committees," says Vendler.

For instance, the English Department has stopped allowing junior Faculty to serve as director of undergraduate studies, for fear that the job necessitated too much arm-twisting of senior Faculty, Sollors says.

"[Junior Faculty] are protected from too time consuming [tasks] or those which build up structural animosity," says Sollors.

On the other hand, some Faculty members, like women and minority professors, are asked to serve more often than their colleagues.

"Every committee feels it has to have its representation of women," Thompson says.

The desire to hear from all voices puts additional pressure on the relatively few available women and minority scholars.

"Women and under-represented minorities will (until the numbers have risen) always be asked to do rather more," Knowles wrote in an e-mail message. "Role models always are in that position."

Low-Tide

One side effect of the number of decisions now being made in committee is a decrease in the involvement of the Faculty as a unified body. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Faculty Council and at full Faculty meetings.

According to Secretary of the Faculty John B. Fox, Jr. '59, Faculty engagement on these bodies is cyclical, alternating between times of genuine passion--such as during the Vietnam War--and calmer days. Fox calls recent years an "ebb" in terms of Faculty involvement.

Since the beginning of the 1998-99 school year, the Faculty has met as a full body only twice, despite a schedule that usually calls for one Faculty meeting a month. And at those meetings, which offer a rare opportunity for Faculty to address all of their colleagues as well as President Neil L. Rudenstine, few Faculty members have chosen to speak.

"We've had less discussion this year than any other time since I've been here," says 17-year Faculty member Cynthia M. Friend, who is the Richards professor of Chemistry.

Many attribute this lack of discussion to a growing consensus that committees can be trusted and no longer need the oversight of their colleagues, who are frequently removed from the issues at hand.

"For as long as the Faculty trusts its delegates (on committees and councils), there needs to be less discussion in plenary session," wrote Knowles in an e-mail message. "The full Faculty needs to intervene either when it ceases to accept the views of its delegates, or when the issues are significant enough to require new policies."

This trend is also reflected on the Faculty Council, the 18-member committee that reviews Faculty policies before passing them on to the full Faculty for final approval.

Formed not long after the Vietnam War, Fox says the committee once met every week, considering up to 10 issues at a sitting. The Council now meets only twice a month and reviews but two or three issues. Lessened interest also forced a change in the nominating procedures for the body, which is elected by a secret vote of the full Faculty.

While candidates once needed nominations from 20 of their colleagues, the process now operates on a "sliding scale," in which a prospective candidate can enter the race with fewer than five nominations.

"As focus has gone back into teaching and research, the Faculty has gotten to know itself less well, and people don't know who to nominate," Fox says.

And as fewer Faculty members are nominated, the same pool of people who can't say no to other commitments are the ones who get tapped for service.

"People who agree to run for Faculty Council tend to be people who are already engaged," says Friend, herself a member of the Council.

When Nothing Else Will Do

Despite the sacrifices the University requires from its professors--research, sleep and preparation time--Faculty members say they would change little.

"Even if there were opportunities for economies of scale, I don't think [the Faculty] would go for it," says Thompson.

Fox and Sollors point to intrinsic similarities between Harvard students and the Faculty who teach them.

"Our Faculty are only older versions of [students]," Fox says. "These were not lay-abouts in high school."

And they all realize--and reject--the alternative to their busy schedules.

"You could do away with meetings by letting the deans make all the decisions, but if you want the result to reflect Faculty opinion you have to go to meetings," Mansfield says.

Thompson says that at an institution like Harvard, where change comes slowly, the administration is unlikely to dismantle the committee system anytime soon. Even the handful of committees that Thompson identifies as superfluous are hard to disband, she says.

"It's hard to get rid of things around here. It's easy to grow things, [but] it's hard to cut them," Thompson says.

Part of the reason the system doesn't change is that few professors are anxious to reinvent the wheel, no matter how hard Faculty must work to make it roll.

"Nobody has proposed a better system for doing all of this," Vendler says. "Even though we complain about it, no one can think of a better way to do it."