For Fineberg, Success May Be A Liability

Harvey V. Fineberg '67 is a very good provost.

So good, in fact, that when President Neil L. Rudenstine said in May that this would be his final year, Fineberg was the first to be mentioned as a possible successor. With his extensive knowledge of the University and his status as Rudenstine's number two, few doubted that Fineberg would be among the top candidates for the job.

But Fineberg's excellent record may also be his greatest liability. He has strengthened the institution of the provost's office, but some in the faculties would rather see a weaker central administration. In fact, powerful chunks of the University wish there wasn't a strong provost at all--and opposition to Fineberg's achievements may create a major obstacle for his candidacy.

There is a general consensus that under Fineberg, the provost's office has become more active and more powerful than ever before in its 10-year history.

Fineberg has built a major role for his office in encouraging interfaculty initiatives, one of the hallmarks of Rudenstine's presidency. And he has increased the office's administrative profile, strengthening its involvement in staff relations, research administration and trademark issues.

Administrators overwhelmingly say that they appreciate Fineberg's work and the administrative consolidation that his office has fostered.

And everyone has kind words for Fineberg himself. He is described as the kind of energetic, highly competent intellectual-administrator who would be an ideal Harvard president.

But as an internal candidate Fineberg is a known quantity highly vulnerable to criticism.

Nothing bad can be said about the substance of Fineberg's record, but a somewhat paradoxical criticism has emerged: sources on the Board of Overseers, in the central administration and in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) say they fear the strengthened provost's office created by Fineberg has diluted the autonomy of the University's faculties. Fineberg's very success may be his undoing.

In particular, these sources say, inherent structural tensions between the faculties and University central administration have been aggravated by the increased role of the office.

The problem's origin lies deep in Harvard's history.

"The bottom line is that Neil decided one of his priorities was to make the University greater than the sum of its parts," said a senior administration official. "This was after 360-whatever years of the University moving in the opposite direction."

It was the provost's office that Rudenstine charged with the tasks of increasing collaboration between the faculties and consolidating central administration.

Fineberg took over the office as momentum for change gathered and he has been extraordinarily effective as provost. Consequently, he has become--for some--a magnet for resentment over these issues.

"There are some things that are high-profile that are pissing people off," said a senior administrator. "I think Harvey is in the position of being assigned some of the most complicated tasks. That's just what the provost's portfolio is."

Sources say that FAS, which has historically been the strongest and most central of the faculties, is particularly worried about the growing role of the provost's office.

Publicly, FAS officials deny that tensions exist, but privately, some administrators say that they are concerned about Fineberg's activist role in academic matters.

"It's a combination of Fineberg's own self-confidence that he understands the Faculty and his own willingness to undertake initiatives, and the fact that there has been an opportunity to do so," says a senior administrator. "The provost is a graduate of the College. He has a doctorate from GSAS. He feels he knows FAS."

Those who support Fineberg stress that the tensions others perceive are in fact minimal, and say that the structural explanation for their origins is most important.

"Harvey's a very strong leader and the dean of FAS is also very independent," says a senior official. "There's a natural sort of chafing with someone who's exerting strong leadership and someone who prefers to be left alone. I think it has to do with the politics of bringing a university together when it's decentralized."

Whatever tensions others perceive are inevitable, regardless of who occupies the provost's office, says another official: "It doesn't have to do with him; it has to do with how much of a change it is to have a provost."

Some University administrators say privately that over the course of the last semester, Fineberg has been campaigning for the presidency, a concern that is part of their worries over the growing role of his office.

They say that the increasingly public initatives of the provost's office--such as the high-profile Mental Health Initiative, the provost's column on the cover of the Harvard Community Resource and even the prominence of the provost's biography on his web site--are insignificant individually, but taken collectively, are suggestive of a campaign for the presidency.

But analysis of mentions of Fineberg's name in the University's official publication, the Harvard Gazette, indicates that while the public visibility of the provost's office has increased over time, at least its official public profile has not changed since Rudenstine announced his resignation.

The average number of mentions of the provost in the Gazette in his last two years in office is 40 percent higher than the average number of mentions from first two years in office, but the number of mentions has remained constant over the past few months.

Sources close to the provost say that at a staff meeting right after Rudenstine's resignation announcement, the provost told his subordinates that he expected the office to carry on business as usual during the search.

And they say Fineberg is so ethical and so circumspect that the allegations he is campaigning for the presidency are absurd.

"That is ridiculous," says Assistant Provost Sarah E. Wald. "He wouldn't even tolerate that, let alone orchestrate that."