For Faculty Chief, A Balancing Act

One Tuesday each month, Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby leaves his impressive office, decorated with Oriental art, walks through a high-ceilinged corridor, and enters perhaps the most beautiful room on campus—the Faculty Room, replete with throne-like chairs and dozens of portraits of the men and women, including many former University presidents, who have made Harvard great.

At four o’clock, he takes his seat at a round table at the front of the room, just to the right of University President Lawrence H. Summers. He proceeds to observe his Faculty as, surrounded by the past, they debate and decide the future.

But to attend today’s meeting of the full Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS)—which will be held in the Loeb Drama Center in order to accommodate the record number of professors scheduled to attend—Kirby will walk through climes colder and less hospitable than University Hall.

In some ways this is fitting, because he will arrive at a meeting where the discussion promises to be significantly less comfortable than that to which Kirby is accustomed.

Today’s two principal docket items are a call for a vote of no confidence in Summers and a milder vote of censure of the president. The items come after two months of intense Faculty criticism of Summers’ leadership style, as well as his comments regarding women in science.

Today’s motions promise to impact not only the president, but the dean as well.

OPPOSING CHARGES

In addition to administrative responsibilities that include overseeing all tenure processes and the FAS budget, as well as co-chairing the Harvard College Curricular Review with Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71, Kirby also serves as the representative of the Faculty to the University at large.

And many professors say Kirby—who was appointed by Summers two-and-a-half years ago and serves as his advisor—has been put in a difficult situation by the recent Faculty tumult.

As advisor to the president, he cannot easily criticize Summers—if he were to do so openly, “the whole institution is headed to a breakdown,” according to Saltonstall Professor of History Charles S. Maier ’60.

But as the representative of the Faculty, Kirby must also be receptive to, and proactive concerning, professors’ grievances towards his boss.

A dean of the Faculty “reports to the president and does need to be loyal in a public sense, and that is, I think, a job requirement,” said William Damon, professor of education at Stanford University. “On the other hand, if that loyalty makes him lose the confidence of the Faculty, then he’s worked himself out of a job.”

“It would take a very creative person to figure out how to run both of those,” Damon added.

Kirby, who has largely remained silent regarding the Summers controversy, declined to comment for this article.

In the past, he has characterized his own leadership style as one of gauging the Faculty’s consensus and translating that into official policy.

“There are different styles of leadership, and I would probably characterize myself as one who aims to move and direct and lead a Faculty—very possibly in a more reserved way,” Kirby said in a Jan. 20 interview. “I think it’s important that this process be collective, that we discuss and move as a body.”

Some have criticized Kirby for taking this leadership style to an extreme by allowing Summers to take more control over FAS affairs at the expense of Faculty autonomy.

“I think that from early on, the President has pushed very hard to have his way of the running of things in University Hall and that the Dean didn’t have the strength to oppose it,” said one member of the Faculty Council—the 18-member governing board of FAS—who requested to remain anonymous in order to avoid any appearance of personal confrontation with Kirby, who chairs the Council.

“Looking at what’s happened to University Hall, I think he’s been pushed further than he should have allowed himself to be,” the professor said, adding that Kirby should have been prepared to threaten to resign when his power was excessively undermined.

But Kirby’s supporters say that his famously genteel demeanor—especially in contrast with Summers’ more brusque style—has led to the misperception that Kirby has been overpowered by the president.

In reality, they say, Kirby’s restrained public face masks his more privately-expressed advocacy for the Faculty and resistance to some of Summers’ ideas.

“Kirby is not somebody to mince words when it comes to matters of principle. The fact that he hasn’t advertised his talks with the President one-on-one doesn’t mean that he hasn’t had them. In fact, I’m sure he has,” said one department chair who asked to remain anonymous so that he could speak plainly about what he called “sensitive issues.”

Ultimately, Kirby’s fate is tied to Summers’.

Even if neither of today’s censure motions passes, Summers will likely be forced to amend his leadership style substantially, which would give Kirby more breathing room to fulfill his responsibilities to the Faculty.

But some say that if those changes do not come fast enough, professors may lose their faith in Kirby’s ability to represent their concerns in the face of Summers’ aggressive leadership.

If Summer does not change his leadership style, “then I think there’ll continue to be very serious problems, because there’s a lack of trust,” said one senior faculty member who asked to remain anonymous.

FINDING THE LEADER

Kirby’s at-times conflicting roles explain the Faculty’s mixed reactions to his leadership.

According to some professors, Kirby deserves to be criticized for failing to ensure that the Faculty is capable of self-governance. They say that not only is Summers too strong a leader, but that Kirby is too weak a defender of the Faculty—and that now is the time for him to shore up this role.

“Faculty members, I believe, are eager to have that kind of [strong] leadership [from the Dean] to hold us together so that we don’t end up turning against each other,” said Jan Ziolkowski, chair of the Folklore and Mythology department.

And others say Kirby has actually exhibited the same kind of top-down leadership that Summers has drawn fire for.

“It may be that Larry Summers is not the only person in the upper administration who’s been creating the impression that decisions have already been made,” said Weary Professor of German and Comparative Literature Judith L. Ryan in an interview last month. “If we don’t already come to the same decisions, then these decisions are just going to be made in spite of us anyway.”

Others argue that once Summers’ aggressive leadership style is curtailed, Kirby will have more room to be an effective leader.

“I think most of the Faculty upset has really been directed at President Summers and not at Dean Kirby. I think that most people have pretty good relations with Dean Kirby, and he’s seen as being very responsive and respectful of the faculty,” said Sociology Department Chair Mary C. Waters.

“I think the problem has been, from our perspective at FAS, [Kirby] hasn’t been left alone enough to do his job,” she added.

Kirby’s fate is largely intertwined with Summers’ own—and so today’s no confidence and censure votes promise to have strong consequences for the Dean as well as for the President.

Summers will likely be forced to change some aspects of his leadership style, though the form and extent of those reforms remains to be seen—andKirby will likely see his position among the faculty reinforced.

And professors say they are willing to work with Kirby to help him consolidate his power.

“We would like to give him more support to have him on our side as we try to give the Faculty more say in the governance,” Ryan said yesterday.

—Staff writer William C. Marra can be reached at wmarra@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Sara E. Polsky can be reached at polsky@fas.harvard.edu.