Harvard’s President Used To Chair Faculty Meetings. Is It Time for Garber To Return?

For decades, Harvard presidents chaired the monthly meetings of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, creating a direct line between faculty and the University’s central administration.

But, since the end of Lawrence S. Bacow’s presidency in summer 2023, Harvard’s president has not consistently attended faculty meetings.

As faculty push for greater input in Harvard’s governance, some professors say the president’s absence has left the current officeholder, Alan M. Garber ’76, with limits on his knowledge of faculty concerns — and fewer opportunities to receive guidance from professors as the University faces mounting pressure from Washington.

“It just makes the place more impersonal, more corporate, more top down,” Classics professor Richard F. Thomas said. “With the president presiding, the access was built into the governance structure.”

Former President Claudine Gay — who served as FAS Dean from 2018 through her inauguration — announced in March 2023 that she would not return to chair FAS meetings as president. With the blessing of Bacow, her predecessor, she handed off the responsibility to her successor, Hopi E. Hoekstra.

Gay said at the time that she found the tradition “curious as a faculty member, and limiting as an FAS Dean.”

The change took place at a moment when faculty meetings, which had been moved online due to the pandemic, were largely quiet and scripted occasions.

But the turbulent end of Gay’s term — amid student protests, political pressure, and scrutiny of Harvard’s presidential selection process — would cause some faculty to say a gap had opened between professors, the president’s office, and Harvard’s governing boards.

As the FAS considers adopting new free speech policies and Harvard responds to directives from Washington that increasingly threaten research, debates will almost certainly play out on the Faculty Room floor — often, without Garber.

History professor Maya R. Jasanoff ’96 said she thought the timing of the change was “unfortunate.”

“We were reminded during the tumult of 2023-24 that the President is — of course — a member of the Harvard Corporation, and as such, represents the voices of Harvard faculty on the Harvard Corporation,” Jasanoff said.

The change “represented yet further distancing between members of the faculty and the President,” she added.

At points, faculty aired their dissatisfaction with Mass. Hall at the very FAS meetings that Harvard presidents no longer chair. In May, faculty grilled Harvard Provost John F. Manning ’82 over the University’s refusal to negotiate with the pro-Palestine protesters then encamped in Harvard Yard.

When Manning claimed that Garber — who was not in attendance — was not aware of requests to negotiate, the audience responded with gasps and incredulous laughter.

At the time, Government professor Steven R. Levitsky described the meeting as evidence of how “out of touch” administrators were with FAS faculty.

FAS spokesperson James Chisholm declined to comment for this article.

Some faculty, however, see the president’s former role at FAS meetings as largely ceremonial, bearing little weight on their understanding of faculty issues.

“Alan Garber is extraordinarily well informed about the affairs of FAS and, indeed, much of the University,” Economics professor Edward Glaeser said.

Government professor Ryan D. Enos said the meetings were “a bit of a holdover from a previous era” and that it “doesn’t really make sense” for the president to ceremonially preside over the meetings but not chair any other Harvard schools’ meetings.

Enos said Garber has stayed responsive over email and made an effort to hear from faculty face-to-face — for instance, at a closed-door December session of the FAS meeting where Garber discussed Harvard’s path forward from Donald Trump’s reelection.

Garber also recently appointed 16 professors to serve on the University’s inaugural faculty advisory council, which will meet with Garber, Manning, and Harvard’s top deans to discuss University-wide decisions.

But some faculty said emails and small-group discussions were not a replacement for the president’s regular attendance at FAS meetings.

In an emailed statement to The Crimson, Harvard Astronomy professor Abraham “Avi” Loeb wrote that though the new faculty advisory council is “an excellent development,” the group is “no substitute to faculty meetings which offers an opportunity for the President to hear directly from the faculty.”

“For the same reason, the interaction of the US President with the House of Representatives is not a substitute for the feedback that the President gets from the American public,” Loeb added.

—Staff writer William C. Mao can be reached at william.mao@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @williamcmao.

—Staff writer Veronica H. Paulus can be reached at veronica.paulus@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @VeronicaHPaulus.