Faculty, Where Art Thou?

In his annual letter to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby wrote, “Through curricular review and renewal, we have recommitted ourselves to our students—for whom, after all, our College and University exist.” Yet over the past year, the priorities of the Faculty have appeared to diverge from those of its outgoing dean. The Faculty has addressed few of the critical problems facing undergraduate education in any meaningful way, including those of curricular reform and the need for better teaching. Instead, it spent much of the year focusing on the ouster of University President Lawrence H. Summers—the most undergraduate-friendly Harvard president in recent history—while at other times it had difficulty even attaining quorums at its meetings to discuss undergraduate matters.

By this fall, all of the Harvard College Curricular Review’s (HCCR) committees had submitted their final reports—an accomplishment that itself occurred nearly three years after the process began. Given the dedication of these committees’ members and the pressing need for change, this year should have been one of thoughtful deliberation and official legislation. But this decisive stage of the curricular review depended on the Faculty’s initiative and leadership, and, regrettably, the Faculty failed to provide either.

Most discouragingly, the antiquated Core Curriculum still survives amid universal disapproval, even though the HCCR’s Committee on General Education (CGE) has produced a group of exciting alternatives to replace the failed system. Professors and students alike have long recognized that the Core suffers from an arbitrary pedagogical philosophy and a needlessly restrictive set of courses, and the CGE has rightly advised FAS to repair these flaws by broadening and liberalizing distribution requirements while developing an innovative catalog of interdisciplinary courses.

The CGE’s report has been on the table since its release in November, but the Faculty failed to even discuss, much less take a vote on, the groundbreaking document at any of its full meetings during the year. While the report certainly has its shortcomings, those can only be addressed when serious debate begins. Thus far, it hasn’t. While the Faculty has made progress in terms of expanding the restrictive course offerings of the Core for next year, there has been far too much inertia with respect to discussing necessary, more sweeping reforms.

When the Faculty finally got around to discussing the curricular review in April, it managed only to address the issues of secondary fields (or minors) and delaying concentration choice. Whlie we fear that both these initiatives compromise the better aspects of a Harvard undergraduate education, more troubling than the content of the decisions were the circumstances under which they were reached. When the Faculty was preparing to overwhelmingly pass a no confidence resolution on Summers’ leadership at its Feb. 28 meeting, so many Faculty members were expected to show up that planners were set to convene the meeting in Sanders Theater instead of the customary Faculty Room. In April, by contrast, when the first measures of the three-year-old curricular review were finally being brought to the floor, the Faculty could barely muster the quorum it needed to take votes on the legislation. (At one meeting, some absent professors had to be called to rush to the Faculty Room so that the necessary quorum could be attained.)

Kirby maintains that students are the focus of this University, but his words sound hollow when so many professors are willing to roast a president who is unequivocally dedicated to undergraduate education while they themselves are unwilling to commit 90 minutes to the same end.

In addition to curricular flaws, the Faculty also continued to largely ignore inadequacies in undergraduate teaching this year—problems that, in many ways, are more pervasive and longstanding than those of the curriculum itself. The defects of teaching at Harvard College are well known, and we do not claim that the complete solution will be easy to find. Two sensible and practical improvements were suggested this year, however, that the Faculty failed to implement: first, to waive the unreasonable three-year limit for lecturers who are effective teachers, and second, to require all professors to distribute Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE) surveys in their courses, and to publish the results of these surveys in the annual CUE Guide.

The current limit of three years for non-tenure track lecturers is unique among virtually all of Harvard’s peer institutions. As a consequence, Harvard—despite its perpetual need for better teachers—is forced to release a number of well-liked and highly effective instructors each year, and yet the Faculty has failed to reconsider its policy on lecturers. Students should not have to study under inferior instruction simply because the Faculty wants to maintain the preeminence of tenured professors.

Similarly unreasonable was the Faculty’s treatment of the CUE survey system, which is amongst the few measures taken to hold professors accountable as effective teachers. Amazingly, professors are not required to distribute CUE surveys to their students, nor are they required to allow the results of those surveys to be published in the following year’s CUE Guide. Even more amazingly, the FAS failed to modify this policy when the issue was discussed at a Faculty meeting this spring. The comments of some professors at that meeting demonstrate the gaping disconnect that exists between the Faculty and the student body. Kenan Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield ’53 offered a comment that was as notable for its arrogance as it was for its disregard for undergraduate education: “Course evaluations introduce the rule of the less wise over the more wise, of students over professors.” This remark was particularly stunning in light of Mansfield’s comments nearly a year earlier in response to surveys indicating students’ dissatisfaction with the quality of their academic experience: “Nobody can say that Harvard students are complacent. I think their intelligence makes them critical,” he said. “I think the administration has commitment to improving Harvard, but I don’t think the majority of the faculty does. They are the ones who are complacent and deserve most of the criticism.” Eventually, the Faculty retreated from the CUE issue, as it has done from so many others this year, and voted to defer the question until the fall.

The CUE debacle is, in many ways, vividly illustrative of where the priorities of the bulk of the Faculty truly lie. If students indeed are the focus of this University, as Dean Kirby suggested, then the Faculty certainly did not act in accordance with that vision in 2005-2006. We recognize that many faculty members are truly committed to the work of improving undergraduate education, and we are grateful for their efforts. But there is much work still to be done in this campaign, and it will require the cooperation of the full Faculty—not only those dedicated few who sit on committees and attend Faculty meetings—to succeed. We hope that the Faculty at large will rise to this challenge next year.