A Blank Slate

When asked to define her vision last month, University President Drew G. Faust stopped for a moment.

She looked off into the distance, turning the question over in her head during what was a pregnant pause.

Faust needed to think carefully about her answer. Her predecessor Lawrence H. Summers’ staunch desire to implement his own vision had ultimately led to his downfall.

Up until this point, Faust has tiptoed around the question, preferring to outline abstract principles for how she wants to lead.

Her latest response marks a departure from the previous administration, both in style and substance.

“I think the word ‘vision’ is misleading because it suggests something that I dream and then impose as my vision for Harvard,” Faust says. “I believe that Harvard has purposes that are not something that I impose on the University as particular to me, but rather are shared values, priorities, and goals that I help define, articulate, and work to advance.”

Faust’s presidency to this point has been largely reactive, defined in the past year by the University’s collective response to the financial crisis.

Formerly a low-profile dean of a Faculty most heavily dependent on endowment income, Faust had barely settled into Mass. Hall before she was confronted by the deepest recession since the Great Depression.

Painful budget cuts following a precipitous drop in Harvard’s endowment left only her highest priorities intact, providing clues as to the University she envisions. Financial aid, for example, remained untouched by the University’s fiscal magicking.

But Faust, as she herself has said, has many years ahead of her to set a vision that will likely not be limited by a shrinking endowment, but directed by the themes she wants to push.

As the economy stands on the cusp of a recovery, the University must decide how it will situate itself in a changed financial landscape, one much different from the boom years of the early 2000s.

When the endowment rebounds, it will not have been Faust alone who has imposed an agenda. Committees, discussion, and careful consideration are the watch-words of this administration.

As is the phrase, “One University,” meaning an inter-disciplinary approach to solving the world’s problems like health and poverty.

But exactly what this means for Harvard remains shrouded in uncertainty, and for now, Faust hesitates to discuss a more concrete set of plans—especially in Allston.

PRESIDENTIAL CHOICES

Stepping into her new role, Faust quickly charmed the faculty with her mild-mannered presence, her gentle quips, and her thoughtful demeanor.

Her first year on the job was everything the end of the Summers’ presidency was not—a lack of discord and uncontroversial priorities.

In her three-year tenure, Faust’s most direct exercise of presidential power may have been the appointment of seven deans across the University.

According to Herman “Dutch” B. Leonard ’74, who holds a dual appointment at Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School and served on the search committee that recently selected the new Business School Dean, Faust made a deliberate effort to choose candidates committed to collaboration across schools and departments.

The question on her mind, he says, was “How will this potential candidate operate in a university environment?”

Martha L. Minow’s appointment as dean of Harvard Law School last year is emblematic of Faust’s desire to integrate the different parts of the University. Minow—whose own scholarly output has garnered praise for pulling from a variety of fields of study—oversaw the reform of the Law School curriculum towards a more interdisciplinary model.

“I think the key thing for the president is that they end up spending a lot of time recruiting staff and deans, and she has done a lot in that score by picking the academic leadership that has the spirit and style that she has,” says Michael F. Cronin ’75, a former member of the Board of Overseers.

A DREAM DEFERRED

The Allston Science Complex would have been a mecca of interdisciplinary work, giving Faust a chance to bring together her new team to embark on the largest cross-faculty initiative under her direction.

Now, instead of continuing construction on the massive building that would have brought scientists from different fields to work under the same roof, the University has been forced to pause construction indefinitely and instead plant shrubbery to appease residents who complained that the unfinished Science Complex was an eyesore.

With University resources strained, planners have had to return to the drawing board, and the timeline for the expansion’s future has been extended.

At this point, University officials say they are no longer wedded to the Allston plans drawn up before the financial crisis—all options are back on the table.

“By anybody’s estimation the endowment is not going to recover in terms of buying power for a number of years, so for that reason alone we have had to rethink at least the pace if not the scope of Allston,” University Provost Steven E. Hyman says. “We really have a lot of rethinking to do.”

Yet the topic of cross-faculty collaboration continues to intrigue Faust, who becomes noticeably excited when discussing the possibilities for breakthroughs when researchers work together.

Faust recently opened an imaging center where scientists working next to each other use state-of-the-art microscopes to examine samples.

“What scientists say to me is that they find that as they sit there working with these microscopes they turn to the person at the next microscope and say, ‘Look what I found!’ and that person weighs in with an opinion,” she says. “If they weren’t adjacent, that conversation, that spark of insight would never have happened.”

Co-development with other universities, private entities, or non-profits has emerged as a possible solution for lessening the financial burden of building a re-imagined Allston campus.

But uncertainty hangs over this effort as well.

Though co-development might overcome obstacles currently facing the Allston expansion, it is a risky proposition, as a large proportion of such efforts at other universities have failed (see story page 45).

And planners do not appear to be in a hurry to move forward, as the current master plan submitted to the city of Boston will be valid until 2012. Officials have been reluctant to offer a time frame for the planning process or when they think they might resume construction.

Until the University decides how to proceed in Allston, the departments slated to move into the Science Complex in July 2011—the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, Harvard Medical School’s Department of Systems Biology, and the Wyss Institute for bioengineering—have been left scrambling to find temporary solutions at the school level with little guidance from central administration.

‘ONE UNIVERSITY’

“Every tub on its own bottom”—that’s how the University’s decentralized Faculties have long operated.

Autonomy at the schools has served the University well, but has also resulted in bureaucratic obstacles that hinder efforts to promote cross-Faculty collaboration.

When the central administration needed more office space, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, its subsidiary, sold Mass. Hall. Two years later, in 2008, FAS realized it needed more space for dorms and so rented back part of the structure it once owned—a telling example of the administrative morass that often plagues the University.

To combat the deep-rooted bureaucratic barriers between schools, Faust has designated University-wide themes—human rights, global health, and library reform are a few examples—and established new institutes that serve as magnets, Leonard says, pulling professors together from across disciplines. These provide environments more conducive to faculty collaboration.

Instead of setting individual agendas, Faust has adopted a “bottom-up” governance style, allowing those below her on the administrative hierarchy to take more initiative on specific projects within the context of broader goals.

“Faculty in general don’t respond well to high authority leadership,” Leonard explains. “I think President Faust understands that.”

It’s all part of Faust’s “One University” mantra, says Law School professor John G. Palfrey, Jr. ’94, who taught a graduate seminar under FAS this fall, despite the politics and economics of cross-school teaching that historically hamper such efforts.

Palfrey says he hopes to expand his seminar on online research methods into a General Education course for undergraduates and bring together professors from potentially five other schools to teach.

Palfrey’s efforts are a small example of the interdisciplinary collaboration Faust has encouraged in pursuit of her “One University” mission.

“She wants the University to be a whole greater than the sum of its parts,” Palfrey says.

Earlier this month, Faust appointed Harvard School of Public Health Professor Sue J. Goldie to head the new Harvard Institute for Global Health, a University-wide institute that Faust hopes will spearhead a discipline that she has called a top priority.

“There is a great appetite for more joint activities,” says School of Public Health Dean Julio Frenk. “And global health is an enormous vehicle for that.”

Economics professor David M. Cutler ’87 reiterates the importance of tackling the problem from various disciplines.

“Global health spans it all,” says Cutler, who serves on HIGH’s executive committee. Without the collaboration of faculty across schools, “it’s kind of like seeing the world only through one color—you just miss a ton of it.”

FUNDING THE FUTURE

Faust is not one to express a great deal of emotion when speaking about the University’s priorities, other than excitement for the possibilities of academic inquiry.

But mention access to education for the University’s students, and Faust is clearly disappointed—saddened, even.

She has presided over the largest expansion in financial aid in the history of higher education, but Harvard’s graduate students by and large lack access to the generous financial aid packages that undergraduates receive.

“We have a lot more work to do for our graduate and professional students,” she says, with a note of melancholy in her voice.

As the University gears up for the next capital campaign, Faust has suggested that financial aid will be a focus of its concerted fundraising efforts. (The University’s last capital campaign, which ended in 1999, raised $3.3 billion in today’s dollars.)

The upcoming fundraising drive will provide Faust with a tangible opportunity—and a duty—to articulate a vision for the University and to revive the initiatives that have fallen victim to financial pressures.

But that campaign may be years away.

“What counts is what you do when you have the flexibility to do it,” Business School Professor and former University Provost Jerry R. Green says. “You know, every president has their own style.”

“I think she’s going to find the right role for herself,” Green adds.

—Staff writer Elias J. Groll can be reached at egroll@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Noah S. Rayman can be reached at nrayman@fas.harvard.edu.