Faculty No-Show

Under the national media’s spotlight for the past year, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) portrayed itself as a wounded army of academics controlled by a tyrannical bully, University President Lawrence H. Summers. “[We must] show the public that we are not cowards,” said Arthur Kleinman, chair of the anthropology department, in one of last February’s raucous Faculty meetings. “[We must] debate openly whether [Summers’ plans] are the social and scholarly agenda that we want pushed from Mass. Hall,” added Professor of Anthropology and of African American Studies J. Lorand Matory ‘82.

But in the Faculty’s first chance to display its academic leadership following its successful coup, Dean of FAS William C. Kirby barely mustered a quorum on Tuesday for the first round of votes on the Harvard College Curricular Review (HCCR). This abysmal attendance not only questions the Faculty’s commitment to the future of the College’s curriculum but also its idealistic complaints about Summers’ inability to effectively run an academic institution—at least he showed up.

To be sure, there are several members of the Faculty who have served the University admirably in this once-per-generation exercise of redefining education at Harvard College. But those who have served on committees, attended forums, and written essays are the piddling few; their work is mocked by a vastly larger portion of the Faculty that seems capable of showing up to monthly Faculty meetings—which last only 90 minutes—only when it means taking shots against someone who actually did care.

It seems even among those who did show up, the audience was woefully unprepared and uninformed. After bickering for 45 minutes over the technicalities of parliamentary procedure, the Faculty voted on only one of the issues on the agenda: introducing secondary fields. Although the group eventually reached near unanimity on approving Harvard’s version of minors, the time wasted on minutia and clarifications—points that should have been scrutinized during the past six months during which the legislation has remained untouched—delayed a vote on the second proposed change, which suggests moving concentration choice to sophomore year. At the moment, even the approved legislation has an attached amendment that the Education Policy Committee—a subcommittee of the HCCR—has to reconsider before its final manifesto is released in September. While we realize that a curriculur review must be handled delicately and all angles of legislation fully explored, if the only concrete discussion taking place is at ill-attended Faculty meetings—with nothing of substance in between—there will be no end in sight.

This shameful coordination and lack of devotion, especially in comparison to the impassioned, standing-room-only crowds that filled University Hall for nearly a year of attacking Summers, only reaffirms the perception of Harvard faculty members’ apathy toward undergraduate education. Pictured in a recent New York Times art editorial as “spoiled faculty members who refuse to teach,” FAS does itself no service by failing to attend its own crucial meetings.

Faculty members now have full responsibility for the outcome of the curriculum’s extensive changes. We hope that as additional parts of the HCCR come to vote that the Faculty will show a more unified and spirited tie to its changes. Now more than ever, the Faculty has the power to fully shape its students’ education, and if members wish to act as the educators that they claim to be, then they should seize this opportunity with the same fervor that defined the Summers turmoil.