6 New Members Elected to Harvard FAS Faculty Council

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences elected six new members to the Faculty Council, bringing new faces to a body that has had unprecedented facetime with top Harvard leadership this semester.

The Faculty Council, a 19-member group chaired by FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra, is arguably the University’s most influential faculty committee. They guide Harvard’s largest division — which is composed of Harvard College, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the Division of Continuing Education.

Molecular and Cell Biology professor Victoria M. D’Souza, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology professor David A. Haig, and Government professor Steven R. Levitsky will represent the FAS at large. Comparative Literature professor Annette D. Lienau, Economics lecturer Jeffrey Miron, and Physics professor Amir Yacoby will represent their respective divisions.

Hoekstra announced the election results at a faculty meeting Tuesday. The six new members will begin their terms on July 1.

They join the Council at a time when Harvard’s most senior leadership is increasingly looking to the faculty to help guide the University out of a winter of crisis. The group has already met twice this semester with interim Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 and, on Feb. 21, with two Harvard Corporation members — including Senior Fellow Penny S. Pritzker ’81.

The group debates FAS policy changes before they are brought to monthly faculty meetings for a broader vote. Though any voting member of the FAS may introduce new business, in practice, almost all legislation that comes before the FAS passes through the Faculty Council beforehand.

Haig, one of the at-large electees, wrote in an email that he ran for the Faculty Council to help remedy a University that, he said, has become “increasingly dogmatic” and bureaucratic over the past twenty years.

“I would like to contribute to reversing some of these trends and for students to find Harvard a more intellectually challenging environment,” Haig wrote. “I hope to be able to add my voice to making Harvard a more enjoyable and caring environment for all members of its community.”

“We welcome a wide range of points of view in faculty governance. A diversity of opinion is vital for robust decision making,” Secretary of the Faculty Susan Lively wrote in a statement. “And I’m delighted they feel that serving on the Faculty Council will be an effective way to address their concerns.”

“I take it as a vote of confidence in the Faculty's system of governance,” Lively added.

Yacoby, the Sciences Division electee, said he saw his new role on the Faculty Council as a chance to help address a litany of challenges facing Harvard: delineating the boundaries of free speech, addressing antisemitism and Islamophobia concerns, and negotiating the fallout of the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against race-conscious admissions.

“Maybe the Faculty Council can help in some of these things,” Yacoby said.

—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.