Arts and Sciences: Aspirations and Anxieties

Harvard faculty’s first meeting focuses on speech, governance, AI, and other concerns.

Hopi Hoekstra

FAS Dean Hopi Hoekstra, setting a tone for faculty colleagues after a difficult year | PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

During the first Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) meeting of the year, on October 1, Dean Hopi Hoekstra tried to set a positive tone for her colleagues concerned about Harvard’s challenges in the wake of a traumatic 2023-2024 (her first year as dean). Their subsequent questions suggested prevailing anxieties and concerns about the boundaries of speech on campus, University governance, artificial intelligence, and the best ways to foster productive engagement and conversations within the community (discussed in detail below).

Acknowledging a community “much changed from last spring,” Hoekstra noted a change for FAS itself: that its meetings this year will take place in the Harvard Art Museums’ subterranean Menschel Hall, rather than in the Faculty Room in University Hall—figuratively, the historic heart of the faculty and of Harvard itself. She cited greater attendance than in years past, and work to think more intentionally during the year about the uses of faculty meetings (see below) and of the Faculty Room itself (perhaps a reference to the long-planned reconfiguration of the art and imagery hung there, under chief campus curator Brenda Tindal, following a 2021 report on signage and visual culture).

The change in venue had practical and symbolic consequences. Attendance continues to be tepid (about half of Menschel’s 292 seats were filled)—and unlike the relatively intimate seating in the round in the Faculty Room, the museum venue is a long, steeply banked lecture hall (leading Hoekstra to joke, “Just like classes I teach, there’s lots of room in the front here”), creating distance between the faculty and its leaders that is exactly the opposite of the culture she herself models and is at pains to enhance. And there was, as some faculty members noted, a palpable sense of difference from the familiar, venerable venue—perhaps underscored, on a campus that was convulsed last spring, by the presence of Harvard University Police officers in the entrance lobby during registration.

Setting a Tone

Hoekstra quickly reviewed signs of normalcy: a community “bustling and alive” with the advent of fall term. She also pointed to signs of change in the directorship of the Art Museums, hosting the meeting site; the appointments of President Alan M. Garber and Provost John F. Manning; new FAS deans of arts and humanities and of science; a new leader for the Bok Center, FAS’s locus for pedagogical training and innovation; and the faculty’s new dean of communications and chief communications officer, Anna Cowenhoven, an FAS veteran, at a critical time for that role. In a way, under varying circumstances, all these appointments represent not only change but institutional continuity, as new leaders fill essential roles. Hoekstra also cited the most important part of the faculty’s renewal: the summer training institute for 30 or so new faculty colleagues, and the September 2 convocation welcoming 1,647 new undergraduates.

She noted that this is the first class admitted since the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the use of affirmative action in admissions, and that enrollment data indicate a decrease in the number of undergraduates in the class of 2028 who identify as black. Hoekstra cautioned that the data are confusing compared to other schools’ reports, and the outcomes will likely change over the course of several admissions cycles. But she firmly declared that “diversity…is a precondition for real excellence” in Harvard’s academic work, and remains a fundamental value within the constraints of the current law.

In the context of the admissions developments, Hoekstra thanked and praised the College’s dean, Rakesh Khurana, who is stepping down at the end of this academic year; he received sustained applause.

“Take Back Our Narrative”

Hoekstra said that she had come to Harvard nearly two decades ago—leaving behind her West Coast parents and sibling, and wonderful offers from Stanford and Berkeley—to come to a place where “the opportunities were open, endless,” limited only by her own curiosity. She recognized a community of wonderful colleagues, post docs, graduate students, and undergraduates, and the potential to “import” even more such people. Realizing that sense of intellectual opportunity for Harvard today, for FAS colleagues, and for students, she said, is her aspiration as dean, at a pivotal moment for the institution.

Accordingly, she is devoting her work to advancing scholarly excellence—in recruiting talent, fostering collaboration across departments and divisions, and applying resources to the most promising academic opportunities. In pursuing that academic focus, she said—alluding to the turmoil of last year—“With your help, we can take back our narrative.”

She reemphasized sustaining a broadly diverse student body, recruiting talented learners from all walks of life, and supporting them once they enroll.

And she said focusing on academic excellence was the third fundamental priority: supporting and enhancing the classroom experience, investing in pedagogy, and creating an environment for “transformational learning through study and, importantly, through dialogue” (subjects for FAS task forces she established last year).

All those aims, Hoekstra said, depend on collaborative work among the faculty members themselves: careful listening, good-faith exchanges with one another (particularly on areas of disagreement), and a commitment to working together to effect lasting changes where warranted.

Her own leadership, she continued, was predicated on bringing forth the widest range of faculty voices. She cited formal task forces and working groups on classroom expectations and experiences, civil discourse, artificial intelligence, and the best use of the faculty’s own meetings (see below). She will also create ad hoc groups to access faculty opinion on emerging issues; has convened faculty-wide groups to prepare for this fall semester, and to garner opinion from department chairs on best practices and issues FAS leaders need to address; is working with the elected Faculty Council to hear opinions and to hash out policies (not simply to rubber-stamp already-drafted legislation); and has organized small, social gatherings (over lunch, for example), in which all ladder faculty members are eligible to participate, to foster social ties and engagement on FAS issues.

At an important moment for Harvard, when the purposes and values of higher education are under great challenge, Hoekstra declared herself dedicated to hearing FAS colleagues’ views and bringing them to bear on faculty and University concerns. She welcomed visits, email outreach, and phone calls—even for expression of perspectives on which there was disagreement—and closed by saying, “Let’s please keep making that investment in each other and the future of FAS.”

Hoekstra’s sincerity and warmth were on evident display: as the meeting progressed, she thanked each colleague who rose to ask (often difficult) questions for doing so, and for the opportunity to respond. And the faculty members seemed to respond in kind: several prefaced their questions by thanking her for her empathy and even her “human decency and character.”

Both may be important, at a time when the faculty members, uneasy about University governance, are contemplating creating a Harvard-wide faculty senate. As the ensuing questions at the faculty meeting made clear, the rules about use of the campus, promulgated administratively during the summer (in response to last spring’s protests, encampment in Harvard Yard, and other actions), have if anything intensified at least some faculty members’ objections to the substance of new policies and how they are made. That complicates Hoekstra’s job, and puts an even greater premium on engaged, productive discourse within the FAS itself if it is to advance on its academic aims.

AI, Speech on Campus, Legacy Admissions

Significant concerns arose during the faculty’s open question period.

Artificial intelligence. The first concerned AI. The University has provided generative AI accounts to faculty and students, the speaker noted, in effect encouraging them to use the technology. She wondered whether Harvard ought to encourage community members to go faster in applying the technology to their research and learning—or to slow down; to apply the tools, or instead to stretch their own minds; and to recognize more clearly that AI tools are incapable of emotion or sensation in the way trained humans are. Given concerns about the technology’s training incursions on intellectual property and copyright (of obvious concern to professors), susceptibility to bias and errors, and huge environmental costs, ought not Harvard educators, in the spirit Hoekstra had just outlined, focus less on encouraging adoption of AI and more on thinking through the tradeoffs of using it?

Hoekstra agreed with the spirit of the question, she said. AI is being made available so faculty and students can make up their own minds about the challenges it poses and the opportunities it affords. Her special adviser on AI, Christopher Stubbs, former dean of science, is especially attuned to these ethical issues, she said, and committed to Harvard’s leadership role in sorting them out for appropriate academic use of AI tools. FAS had held a symposium on AI for faculty last fall, and an FAS advisory committee is examining its use in teaching and research across the faculty. Hoekstra embraced the idea of a wider conversation, including students.

Campus use and speech. The first of several speakers rose to challenge the rules on campus use disseminated by executive vice president Meredith Weenick on August 1 and August 30—on the grounds that they seem overly restrictive of speech, and at odds with the FAS and University values of intellectual vitality. In that light, how could FAS assert its governance role in such policies? The speaker asked Hoekstra what role FAS had played in devising the rules, and what options it had to get them revised for FAS.

(Of note: in a survey of 44 institutions’ responses to last academic year’s student protests and encampments, the Chronicle of Higher Education found that Harvard now has more kinds of restrictions on the manner of student protest—across six categories including structures, masking, amplified sound, and so on—than any other school it identified putting such constraints in place.)

Hoekstra said, without qualification, that she could not offer any insight into the process of drafting the rules—a clear statement that she, and FAS, had not been engaged in shaping them. As for the substance, she indicated, President Garber had told the faculty in a town hall setting that the regulations would be drafted quickly (the perfect as the enemy of the good), and then subjected to improvement. How might FAS be involved in that? Hoekstra suggested that faculty members avail themselves of the email address for making comments. More significantly she said that Weenick, under whose authority the rules were collated and issued, had said that instead of prior plans to examine them in a year, there will now be listening sessions soon to garner reactions, learn about unintended consequences, and perhaps undertake revisions—and a further opportunity to do so again next spring.

FAS itself can seek a “local exemption” to such rules, Hoekstra said, pointing to its policies for what permissions student groups must request to undertake certain activities, the procedures to apply to use the Yard, and so on. She had convened advisory groups to discuss such matters, and thanked the questioner for raising the issue.

Another professor rose to say he felt the campus use rules raised questions more pressing than Hoekstra’s actions, as described, could satisfy. The rules, he said, are “drastically overreaching” (he cited prohibitions on chalking messages, for example, or, possibly governing the kinds of notes one could put on an office door). He urged Hoekstra to convey “firmly, strongly, and as directly as possible” FAS’s need and desire for local exceptions to the rules, and to ask Weenick to appear before the faculty to explain and defend them under questioning.

Hoekstra amplified that she had shared the faculty concerns with Weenick and with Mass. Hall (the offices of the president and provost)—and that doing so was an important responsibility of her office as dean. She would invite Weenick to meet with the faculty, and encouraged all FAS members to raise their concerns. She suggested that steps toward a “commonsense approach” to implementing the rules would be forthcoming in a few weeks, incorporating faculty views.

(In a sense, such implementing language might echo the September publication of guidelines on how to understand and apply the University policy on institutional voice adopted in late May.)

A third speaker rose to reinforce the view that the campus-use rules feel like “a substantial overreach with…consequences for free expression for our students and faculty” and to ask Hoekstra to elaborate on the steps she is taking.

Hoekstra talked more about having a small, “nimble” advisory group to gather faculty sentiments quickly on such issues; to use the Faculty Council as a true “sounding board” for concerns, able to help her “think things through”; and to engage with the faculty generally, for which she thanked members. Unsaid, but clearly hovering in the background, are the governance concerns impelling discussion of a senate or other channels for faculty voice.

A separate question concerned the recent adoption by California of a blanket ban on legacy preferences in college and university admissions: when would Harvard follow suit?

Hoekstra said that she could not answer the question, but would pose it to President Garber. (Such admissions policies are set at the Corporation level—another instance of Harvard’s traditional governing arrangements that spread authority among the governing boards, senior administrators, and the faculties themselves.)

Managing the Faculty’s Meetings

Professor of religion and Indian philosophy Parimal G. Patil then reported for one of Hoekstra’s advisory groups, this one an ad hoc committee on meetings of the faculty itself. In the new circumstances of the dean, rather than Harvard’s president, chairing FAS meetings, and out of a desire to foster community, Patil’s small group sought to make the sessions more productive and to engage wider participation. Among its recommendations to the dean, he outlined three:

•reserving the final 45 minutes of each monthly meeting for open, faculty-focused, in camera discussions on any topics of interest: admissions, hiring, campus use, conversations with the president and provost, and so on;

•removing routine business (slide decks from presentations, committee reports) to offline forums, effectively streamlining the agenda of the formal meetings; and

•considering how balloting on important issues is conducted, including disseminating ballots to all faculty members on certain occasions, so they can weigh in whether present or not.

In the discussion, two significant points were raised. First, why move to in camera sessions? Patil said such circumstances were conducive to transparent conversations among the faculty members themselves. Legislative debates would not be in camera.

(Faculty meetings, at FAS’s discretion, are now subject to reporting by the Harvard Crimson and this magazine—and the identities of speakers from the floor are protected; in camera sessions on the granting of degrees are naturally not subject to such coverage. Other faculty town halls are routinely off limits. The October 1 faculty meeting, which in many ways modeled civic discourse on fraught issues, might or might not have been open to coverage were the faculty to move such conversation to an in camera forum; presumably such sessions would still be captured in the secretary’s minutes, although that topic was not broached.)

Second, a professor wondered whether an open-forum meeting of the whole faculty would not devolve into 200 separate faculty members delivering monologues. Might the faculty instead want to break out into smaller discussion sessions, engage on Slack or other channels, or otherwise foster discussion by reducing the size of the groups, aiming to better engage their participants in discussion? Patil agreed, but also hoped an in camera discussion would enable true conversation and would not devolve into a forum for individual monologues.

There were no comments on the second point (it aims to address a continuing problem that may explain why few members attend faculty meetings, which have become pro forma exercises much of the time), or the third.

Open Inquiry

Radcliffe Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin and professor of government Eric Beerbohm then briefed the faculty on the report of the University working group on open inquiry and constructive dialogue, issued earlier in the day.

In the discussion, a professor rose to ask a question that echoed the conversation on Patil’s report: if Harvard wished to foster engaging conversations in teaching settings, why had course section sizes risen toward the current apparent target of 18 students—too large for the best conversations to take place? And more importantly, how did the working group’s recommendations fit with the other issues raised during the faculty meeting, concerning the new rules on campus use, in the context of the University Statement on Rights and Responsibilities and the FAS’s own speech guidelines?

Brown-Nagin said the working group had thought about section size, but did not pursue that in its report because it was too detailed for a University-level overview, and properly a subject for faculty- and school-level policies. (That reflects the every-tub-on-its-own-bottom nature of Harvard’s decentralized operations; and there are obviously unexpressed financial considerations for a faculty like FAS, which staffs a lot of course sections; see a report bearing on discussion of section sizes two decades ago.)

More broadly, she said about the emerging University policies, rules, and norms, “I agree all these policies and reports are in conversation with each other.”

Some of that conversation was on display within FAS October 1. It will assuredly continue, across the University, in the days to come.

Read more articles by John S. Rosenberg

You might also like

President Garber’s Agenda

Focusing on Harvard’s academic opportunities and frontiers

“Building Bridges” Across Disagreements

Harvard establishes a fund for student projects that create community.

Football: Harvard 45-Princeton 13

The Crimson emphatically snaps a six-game losing streak to the Tigers

Most popular

President Garber’s Agenda

Focusing on Harvard’s academic opportunities and frontiers

Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College?

Historian Alexander Keyssar on why the unpopular institution has prevailed 

The End of the Ivy League?

College sports are changing. Will Harvard athletics?

More to explore

America's Housing Problem—Explained

America’s housing problem—and what to do about it

How Does the Brain Interpret Language in Real-Time?

New research on how the brain uses sounds to form words and create meaning.

Ecological Edges: Darren Sears’s Watercolor Landscapes

The surreal, artistic cartography of Darren Sears