Garber Appoints 16 Professors to Inaugural Faculty Advisory Council

Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 appointed a slate of 16 faculty members to serve on the University’s inaugural faculty advisory council during the group’s two-year test run.

The advisory body’s members — who come from all nine of Harvard’s faculty divisions — will meet “regularly” with Garber, Provost John F. Manning ’82, and Harvard’s top deans, Garber wrote in an email to Harvard affiliates Friday morning.

“The UFAC will offer insights on a broad range of University-wide issues, helping to inform our decision-making processes and bringing diverse faculty perspectives to our deliberations,” Garber wrote in his email.

The advisory council — which began soliciting members in November — was announced as Garber and the governing boards aim to convince mistrustful faculty they are listening. Amid a widespread perception that Harvard’s top leaders lack transparency and failed to guide the University through crises last spring, some professors have tried to assert a stronger role for faculty governance.

Garber’s announcement comes just one month after delegates from across Harvard held their first planning body meeting to draw up designs for a University-wide faculty senate. So far, eight of Harvard’s nine faculties have backed the creation of the planning body.

Leaders of the faculty senate drive have indicated that they do not plan to drop their effort because of the formation of a faculty advisory council. During its two-year pilot, the advisory council will function primarily as a consultative body for Harvard’s top brass without formal power of its own.

Garber’s appointees include University Professor Annette Gordon-Reed; Harvard Graduate School of Design professor Martin Bechthold; Harvard Kennedy School professor Iris Bohnet; Harvard Medical School professors Jorge E. Chavarro, Sandeep R. Datta, and Robert E. Kingston ’76; Harvard School of Dental Medicine professor Catherine Hayes; Harvard Business School professors Robert S. Huckman and Fernanda Viegas; Harvard Divinity School professor Tracey E. Hucks; Harvard Graduate School of Education professor Stephanie M. Jones; Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth P. Kamali; School of Public Health professor Matthew K. Nock; Faculty of Arts and Sciences professors Karin I. Öberg and Gina Schouten; and Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences professor Stephen Chong.

Bechthold also serves on the planning body, and Datta led the faculty senate initiative at HMS.

Unlike the planning body delegates — who were selected after volunteering or through faculty elections — the advisory council was appointed directly by Garber in consultation with school deans.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

—Staff writer Dhruv T. Patel can be reached at dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @dhruvtkpatel.

—Staff writer Grace E. Yoon can be reached at grace.yoon@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @graceunkyoon.