Hopi Hoekstra to Head Harvard’s Largest School, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Starting Aug. 1

Updated June 28, 2023, at 7:15 p.m.

Hopi E. Hoekstra, a Harvard professor in the Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Molecular and Cellular Biology Department, will be the University’s next dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, capping a four-month search for a successor to president-elect Claudine Gay.

Emma Dench, who currently serves as the dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, will serve as interim FAS dean from July 1 — when Gay becomes president — until Aug. 1, when Hoesktra will begin her tenure, the University announced Monday. Dench will maintain her position as GSAS dean while serving as interim FAS dean.

The surprise announcement comes just days before Gay assumes the presidency and the Supreme Court is expected to rule against Harvard in an affirmative action lawsuit.

With Hoekstra’s selection, Gay has filled all four of the open deanships she inherited as president-elect. Gay already appointed interim deans for the Harvard School of Public Health and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Harvard Divinity School dean David N. Hempton announced he would be extending his tenure through Aug. 31.

In a message to FAS affiliates, Gay praised Hoesktra’s leadership and scholarship, describing her as “experienced in addressing a broad array of opportunities and challenges facing the FAS and the University.”

“She radiates an enthusiasm for all she does, and she will bring to the deanship a combination of thoughtful judgment, intellectual curiosity and breadth, deep integrity and values, and an appetite for innovation and collaboration, all of which promise to serve our community well,” Gay wrote.

“Knowing something myself about the FAS deanship, I am delighted at the prospect of her move to University Hall, and I am confident that she will lead the FAS with foresight, ambition, and wisdom,” she added.

As a scientist, Hoekstra adds greater academic diversity to the University’s top administrative brass, as Gay is a social scientist and Alan M. Garber ’76, the University provost, is a health economist.

In a statement to the Harvard Gazette, a University-run publication, Hoekstra said she was “deeply grateful to Claudine Gay for entrusting me with a set of responsibilities that she knows so well.”

“This is a time of extraordinary opportunity as well as challenge for us, as we work not only to create new knowledge but to do what we can to contribute to a better world,” she said. “I’m eager to partner with President Gay and work with colleagues in the FAS and beyond at a critically important moment for Harvard and for higher education.”

Emma Dench, pictured at the 2022 Commencement ceremony, is the current Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. She will serve as the Interim Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences until Hopi E. Hoekstra assumes the role in August. By Julian J. Giordano

Hoesktra, who has a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley and a Ph.D. from the University of Washington, Seattle, joined Harvard in 2007 as an associate professor of natural sciences and a curator at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. She became a tenured professor in 2010. In 2013, she became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. For 10 years, she taught the popular foundational biology course Life Sciences 1B: “An Integrated Introduction to the Life Sciences: Genetics, Genomics, and Evolution.”

She will give up her role at HHMI to head the FAS, Harvard spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo confirmed in an email Wednesday. According to the HHMI website, investigators cannot “hold the positions of dean, provost, vice president, president of an institution, or other similar positions.”

Hoekstra is also a fellow at the National Academy of Sciences and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 2016 to 2020, she served as the president of Harvard’s Phi Beta Kappa Society.

Unlike Gay — who was the dean of the Social Sciences Division before assuming the FAS deanship — Hoekstra has not held a major administrative position at Harvard before. Nevertheless, she has served as a member of several administrative committees within Harvard and the FAS. From 2012 to 2015, she served on the Faculty Council, a steering committee for faculty governance. More recently, she chaired the tenure-track review committee from 2020 to 2021 and served on the presidential search advisory committee that resulted in Bacow’s selection in 2018.

Hoekstra has amassed a series of teaching and research accolades since starting at the University. She received the Fannie Cox Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in 2011. In 2014, Hoekstra was named a Harvard College Professor, and last month, she was named the Jianming Yu Professor of Arts and Sciences, the “highest honor recognizing scholarly achievement” within the FAS.

Garber, who co-chaired the search with Gay, praised Hoekstra in a statement to the Gazette, saying that the biologist “epitomizes the best of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.”

“Hopi is one of our most widely respected professors for very good reasons,” he said. “She’s a superb scientist who is deeply devoted to the University, understanding its complexities and all that makes it special.”

In her email, Gay gave Hoekstra her vote of confidence.

“Just as I have throughout my time in University Hall, I know she will be counting on the counsel and support of a great many of you as she prepares to lead the FAS — and to help Harvard pursue its highest aspirations in the time to come,” she wrote.

—Staff writer Rahem D. Hamid can be reached at rahem.hamid@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Elias J. Schisgall can be reached at elias.schisgall@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @eschisgall.