How Harvard Chooses Its Next College Dean

More than four months after Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana announced he would step down at the end of the academic year, the search for his successor is entering a new stage as the Faculty of Arts and Sciences targets an announcement in the spring.

In the fall, FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra and her 10-member faculty advisory committee gathered input from students and faculty during three public town halls. She also attended a monthly meeting of the faculty deans — professors who live in and advise students in the College’s 12 undergraduate Houses — to gather their input on challenges facing the next dean and qualities they should possess.

But Hoekstra’s next steps will happen in private. Before Harvard’s next Dean of the College is announced, she and the committee must narrow the list of candidates. If Hoekstra does not break with her predecessors, she will interview finalists — historically a single-digit list.

Her appointment will be “subject to approval” by a committee that includes University President Alan M. Garber ’76 and select members of the Harvard Corporation and Board of Overseers, according to FAS spokesperson James Chisholm.

Hoekstra has indicated that the FAS plans to select the next dean well before the end of the spring term to maximize overlap between Khurana’s term and his successor’s.

So far, Hoekstra’s process has closely resembled the last College dean search, conducted by then-FAS Dean Michael D. Smith in 2013. Smith’s search, which ended with Khurana’s appointment, finished roughly nine months after his predecessor announced her plans to resign. With the current search now entering its second semester, the FAS has yet to provide any updates on its progress.

Chisholm declined to comment on the ongoing search.

This year’s search has granted Hoekstra and her advisors a luxury their predecessors did not have: time.

In 2013, Harvard appointed Donald Pfister as interim dean days after former College Dean Evelynn M. Hammonds resigned following revelations that she had secretly authorized searches of a resident dean’s email accounts. Similarly, during the search in 2007 that led to Hammonds’s appointment, David R. Pilbeam was made interim dean only two months after former College Dean Benedict H. Gross stepped down.

Unlike his predecessors, who resigned suddenly and left the College under interim leaders, Khurana gave Harvard a school-year long notice of his intention to step down in July 2025.

Khurana had originally planned to depart the role in spring 2024, following his completion of two standard five-year terms. But senior administrators persuaded Khurana to stay on amid turnover as Claudine Gay left the FAS deanship to assume the University presidency.

Given more than a year of advance notice, Hoekstra has the chance to make a seamless transition — with time to prepare for a search, and without the extra step of appointing an interim dean.

One week after Khurana announced his plans to step down, Hoekstra began soliciting confidential feedback over email from students and faculty. By mid-October, Hoekstra had formed a ten-person faculty advisory committee to aid her search.

Hoekstra and the advisory committee scheduled three town halls in undergraduate dorms to discuss the search. Though Hoekstra advertised snacks for attendees, only about 20 students showed up.

In addition to public town halls, Eliot House Faculty Dean David F. Elmer ’98 said Hoekstra discussed the search at a regular meeting of the faculty deans in November.

“Dean Hoekstra attended one of those meetings to collect our input about the search and in a very general way,” Elmer said. “We weren’t discussing candidates.”

Up to this point, Hoekstra’s process for selecting the next College dean has been almost identical to Smith’s approach in 2013. Following the formation of an advisory committee, Smith began his search by soliciting information from students, faculty, and staff at public discussions around Harvard.

According to a faculty member familiar with past searches, the information from those public discussions was used to help narrow a long list of more than 50 potential candidates down to fewer than 30 names that were then brought to the advisory committee.

The committee then worked with Smith to shorten the list to five or six contenders before conducting official interviews. Each interview included a different selection of committee members, along with Smith. The list was then shrunk again and finalists were selected for second-round interviews.

Three months after the last public town hall, Smith and the committee landed on Khurana.

After then-University President Drew Gilpin Faust and members of the governing boards granted their approval, Khurana was finally announced as the next College dean on Jan. 22, 2014 — days before spring classes began.

—Staff writer Samuel A. Church can be reached at samuel.church@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @samuelachurch.

—Staff writer Cam N. Srivastava can be reached at cam.srivastava@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @camsrivastava.