With Summers on Defensive, Professors Expect Big Role in Search for New Dean

Professors will have a strong voice in the search for a successor to outgoing Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby, according to a plan revealed at the Faculty meeting yesterday.

University Professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich announced the plan and University President Lawrence H. Summers endorsed it early in yesterday’s Faculty meeting, before professors began lobbing verbal darts at the president. A seven-professor subset of the Faculty Council—the 19-member governing board of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences—will participate in the selection of a dean search committee under the plan.

The seven Council members will provide Summers with a list of 24 senior professors from whom Summers will choose a six-person search committee. This committee will then vet the short list of candidates for the position of dean of the Faculty.

Professors will have a more influential role in this process than they did in Summers’ first search for a Faculty dean.

After then-Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles resigned in 2002, Summers appointed the search committee members unconstrained by Faculty nominations. Nor did that committee as a whole discuss specific candidates, only offering general feedback on the qualities it looked for in a dean.

Both professors and Summers see the search for a new dean as a key test of the relationship between the Faculty and the central administration.

“The appointment of the dean, I think, is a very important window through which we can look at this relationship,” Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Peter J. Gomes said at the meeting yesterday.

Throughout the contentious session, Summers stressed his willingness to work closely with the Faculty during the search process as part of his efforts to rebuild his tenuous relationship with some professors.

“I would hope that I would have the opportunity to work closely with members of the Faculty on this search, and in so doing, to regain trust in quarters of the faculty where that trust may not exist today,” Summers said. “I am very much aware of the importance of working as cooperatively and closely with professors of the Faculty as I can.”

At the beginning of yesterday’s question period, two representatives of the Caucus of Chairs—an independent and informal group of current and former department heads—offered their expectations for the dean search.

They urged that the search be “candid, forthright, and confidential,” and called for a dean who, among other things, will take “a collaborative approach in the making of major decisions that face the FAS.”

But some who spoke at the meeting questioned Summers’ ability to find a dean who would satisfy most Faculty if Summers appears to lack a mandate among professors.

“Since the events of a year ago, I think it is not clear from the point of view of a lot of faculty members where the legitimacy to make this choice will come from,” said Christie McDonald, chair of the department of Romance languages and literatures.

Ulrich stressed that Faculty members will be involved in the search process, and invited members of the Faculty to suggest names of possible search committee members to Secretary of the Faculty David B. Fithian.

Once the six-member committee has been created, its members “will work with [Summers] throughout the search process,” Ulrich said.

While Ulrich did not specify a timetable for the dean search, Weary Professor of German and Comparative Literature Judith L. Ryan, a Council member and part of the seven-member subcommittee devoted to the search, said the list of 24 professors will be compiled “as soon as we possibly can....I don’t think you’ll see a long delay.”

In addition to Ulrich and Ryan, the subcommittee consists of Cabot Professor of Social Ethics Mahzarin R. Banaji, Chair of the Department of Physics John Huth, Chair of the Department of Anthropology Arthur Kleinman, Professor of the History of Science Everett I. Mendelsohn, and Chair of the Department of Classics Richard F. Thomas.

One professor who spoke at the meeting, Carswell Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations Peter K. Bol, urged even greater Faculty involvement in the selection of Kirby’s replacement to ensure that the new dean can advocate effectively for the Faculty with Summers.

Because “one of the greatest challenges for the new dean will be how to work with the president,” Bol suggested “that a faculty committee be appointed to find a successor to Dean Kirby, to recommend that person to the corporation for approval by the corporation,” removing Summers from the process.

But Summers reaffirmed his commitment to the plan that he had supported earlier in the meeting.

“I think the shared feeling,” Summers said, “is that the type of procedure that Professor Ulrich laid out is for the best.”

—Staff writer Evan H. Jacobs can be reached at ehjacobs@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Anton S. Troianovski can be reached at atroian@fas.harvard.edu