Harvard FAS Dean Hoekstra Says She Had No Hand in Crafting Campus Use Policy

Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra indicated at a Tuesday FAS meeting that — despite leading Harvard’s largest school — she did not play a role in determining the University’s new rules governing the use of campus spaces.

“I don’t have a lot of insight into how they came to be,” Hoekstra said in response to one faculty member’s question about how the campus use rules were devised.

The rules, which ban signage and events on Harvard property without prior approval, have come under fire from faculty, who have described them as vague and draconian. A small group of professors even staged a public protest against the new policy in Harvard Yard last month.

Hoekstra’s answer is likely to reinforce bubbling frustration that the campus use rules were apparently rolled out by Harvard’s legal office without serious consultation of faculty members or FAS administrators.

Though Hoekstra did not address calls from some professors to exempt the FAS as a whole from the policy, she said she would establish a faculty advisory committee to consider granting exceptions on a case-by-case basis.

Hoekstra also said the University had initially planned to consider altering the campus use rules after keeping them in place for a year and gathering feedback. After complaints from faculty though, she said the University will move up its timeline for the revision process.

According to Hoekstra, during a Sept. 12 town hall with the FAS, University President Alan M. Garber ’76 told faculty the University had taken a shoot-first, ask-questions-later approach to implementing the new rules.

“The thinking was that we can spend a lot of time getting them perfect, or we can do our very best and then provide an opportunity to input,” Hoekstra said.

The forthcoming advisory committee is just one of several ad hoc faculty groups Hoekstra either has or plans to form to involve faculty members in making decisions for the FAS.

Recently, she created an advisory group on civil discourse — a committee that will likely help her direct the administration’s efforts to address barriers to free expression on campus.

The group will be chaired by Government professor Eric Beerbohm and Comparative Literature professor Karen L. Thornber.

Beerbohm also co-chaired the University-wide Open Inquiry and Constructive Dialogue working group — which released its recommendations earlier Tuesday — and serves as an adviser to Hoekstra on civil discourse. Thornber was appointed in June as faculty director of the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning.

—Staff writer Tilly R. Robinson can be reached at tilly.robinson@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @tillyrobin.

—Staff writer Neil H. Shah can be reached at neil.shah@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @neilhshah15.