In recent weeks, as details began to emerge about the long-planned restructuring of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS)—intended to address a projected $350 million structural deficit—so have anxious questions from faculty and staff members.
The overhaul is projected to include significant layoffs—reportedly as much as 25 percent of FAS staff—and will bring major changes to administrative operations. In a series of online town hall meetings with faculty and staff in June and July, FAS leaders unveiled some details about the proposed changes. According to people who attended the meetings, the 40-some departments, 30 academic centers, and other units in FAS will be clustered together into groups, according to subject area, operational needs, and proximity to each other on campus. The groups would share administrative responsibilities and be staffed by a smaller number of centralized employees.
This new organizational model was recommended by the FAS Task Force on Workforce Planning, which, according to a Crimson report, worked with management consulting firm McKinsey and Company. Led by FAS dean of faculty affairs Nina Zipser, the task force began its work in summer 2025 with a mandate from FAS dean Hopi Hoekstra. During this winter and spring, 10 “design teams,” comprised of more than 80 faculty and staff members, were “tasked with reimagining our core administrative functions,” according to a FAS website dedicated to the new model.
Substantial changes are needed, FAS leaders argue, because the division’s current financial situation is unsustainable. The structural deficit they describe amounts to 20 percent of the FAS annual budget and is driven in part by recent challenges—a looming tax increase on the University’s endowment, which Harvard officials say is expected to cost FAS an extra $98 million per year, and uncertainty about the future of federal research funding.
But much of the FAS’s financial problems are longstanding: a 2021 report by the FAS Study Group—a working group convened by former President Claudine Gay, who was then the FAS dean—described an urgent predicament, driven in large part by deferred maintenance on the division’s more than 250 aging buildings. “We’re spending $400 million dollars a year just to keep the buildings from crumbling,” said Safra professor of economics Jeremy Stein, who served on the FAS Study Group and has closely analyzed the division’s finances. Right now, Stein said, the FAS—which relies on Harvard’s endowment for more than half of its annual budget—is $1.4 billion in debt to the central University. Much of that money was borrowed to support facilities and equipment, including several recent renovation and construction projects.
FAS leaders have said they expect to implement the organizational changes sometime this summer, but there is no official word yet on exactly when, and no confirmation about how many jobs would be eliminated—there are 2,300 administrative staff members whose positions fall within the scope of the restructuring, according to the FAS.
Several faculty and staff members who attended the town hall meetings described them as filled with unknowns. “It’s all still very unclear,” according to Loeb professor of sociology Mary Waters, who said she found FAS administrators’ answers to questions during the town hall meetings to be “vague” and unsatisfying. “They have talked about this restructuring for a long time, but there were no details given until a couple of weeks ago.” Even then, she said, administrators did not clarify what the proposed overhaul would mean for individual departments and units. “They didn’t know who would be laid off,” she said, or how many departmental staff members would remain, or to whom those staff members would report in the new centralized model.
Michael Bronksi, a professor in the practice of media and activism in women, gender, and sexuality studies, attended two of the town hall meetings and voiced similar concerns. “It feels demoralizing,” he said. “I mean, we just don’t know anything. We don’t know who or where or which programs or which departments will be reassigned or are losing jobs or are being redesignated in some other way.” This is especially worrisome, he added, for small programs like his with fewer employees. “It feels like a one-size-fits-all approach,” he said.
Bronski is concerned for another reason, too: fall semester is approaching soon, and each new school year requires substantial administrative preparation. Incoming first-year students will register for courses starting August 11, which “can really reshape a lot of classes,” Bronski said. “You really need staff to facilitate that happening easily.” The restructuring “would really be a lot less anxiety-producing,” he added, “if they were planning it for fall of 2027.”
Any official implementation date is likely to be affected by the rules governing layoffs of union employees. About 800 of the FAS administrative employees whose jobs could be cut are members of the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW), according to Carrie Barbash, the union’s former president, who now serves as an organizer and the communications director. HUCTW’s contract requires the University to consult with the union before laying off any members.
“We need to have substantive discussions about every single person they put forward to be laid off,” Barbash said. “They have to talk to us and allow us to make a case for stopping the layoffs and propose alternatives and ask them for the reasoning behind each layoff.” The University, Barbash said, has not yet contacted the union about specific layoffs.
