The reorganization that Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences hinted at through the last year finally came due this summer, and like all major changes, this one brought grand statements, deep skepticism, and some turmoil.
FAS leaders have long argued that the changes, and a pared-down administrative model, are necessary to address a projected structural deficit of $350 million. Within the FAS—and to many alumni—the reforms are significant: a new “federated model” for academic departments; a reorganization of the College administrative structure; and, perhaps most controversially, the departure of the longtime head of the College’s writing center and the demise of the Dudley Community. The moves also come with substantial layoffs: reportedly as much as 25 percent of the FAS staff.
The changes followed months of planning and discussions—and rising anxiety among faculty and staff. They began in late July, with a series of reforms to the College and the first of what FAS leaders said would be several waves of layoffs and other job modifications. The process sparked intense pushback, including from the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW), which represents one-third of the roughly 2,300 FAS employees whose positions fall within the scope of the restructuring. “We’ve been saying all along that this plan is oversimplified in its thinking about how the work actually gets done,” HUCTW organizer Carrie Barbash said in a late July interview. “I think it’s going to be really problematic.”
Some faculty members expressed similar misgivings. “The staff are the ones who actually make the place work,” said Loeb professor of sociology Mary Waters. “They do all of this hidden work that’s more complex than people realize. There are a lot of things that the staff in our departments do that don’t fit on a checklist.”
But FAS leaders have said that a task force convened last year by Edgerly family dean Hopi Hoekstra identified numerous administrative inefficiencies in the University’s largest division, which relies on Harvard’s endowment for more than half of its $1.8 billion annual budget. According to a spokesperson, the FAS staff includes more than 1,500 unique job titles, with little consistency across departments or other units in job descriptions and responsibilities.
In a series of town hall meetings early this summer, Hoekstra and other leaders outlined the basics of a new “federated” structure intended to streamline the division’s complex internal systems. Departments, centers, and other units will be grouped together into three large clusters: arts and humanities, social science, and science. These clusters will be subdivided into “administrative groupings” according to subject area, operational needs, and proximity to each other on campus. Each grouping will share administrative operations and be staffed by a smaller number of more centralized employees.
“We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make deliberate and sustainable changes that will reduce complexity in our administrative work and improve the support we provide for our teaching and research,” Hoekstra wrote in an April letter to FAS faculty and staff.
The reorganization plan for the College, which is part of the FAS, parallels the broader push toward a streamlined structure, by consolidating central functions—academics, housing, student life, and administration—into five umbrella offices under Danoff dean David Deming. Three of those offices already exist: the dean of students office, the administration and finance office, and the office of undergraduate education.
Two other offices are new, and this summer Deming hired administrators to oversee each. Lauren E. Brandt ’01, Ph.D. ’09, previously the College’s associate dean of students, took on the newly created role of secretary of the College, responsible for policies and procedures related to student discipline and academic integrity, Title IX, and antidiscrimination and anti-bullying.
And former dean of freshmen Thomas Dingman ’67, Ed.M. ’73, who retired when the position was discontinued in 2018, returned to serve as interim leader of a new and expanded freshmen dean’s office. That revived position will oversee orientation, academics, advising, housing, and student life programming. Deming said he expects to launch a nationwide search for a permanent dean of freshmen this fall.
More controversially, the College restructuring plan also includes a requirement that all College staff be on campus five days a week, reversing the hybrid work model that has become commonplace since the COVID-19 pandemic. “What we’re selling is an immersive residential experience,” Deming said during a July interview. In contrast to the more administration-heavy FAS, nearly all College staff are student-facing: “Our job,” he said, “is highly relational.”
HUCTW leaders have opposed the mandate, calling it “demoralizing,” and disputed Deming’s insistence that students require, or want, entirely in-person contact with College staff. Barbash said that students typically opt to meet with staff remotely, even when given the choice of meeting in person. Adding that 85 percent of all HUCTW members currently work a hybrid schedule, she said the mandate is “just going to make people miserable.”
The implementation phase of the restructuring effort got off to a tumultuous start, as two early steps prompted immediate backlash from faculty and alumni. In late July, the College laid off Jane Rosenzweig, the longtime director of the Harvard College Writing Center, which employs 25 to 30 tutors every semester to help undergraduates with a range of skills, from first-year writing exercises to senior theses and graduate school application essays. The Writing Center itself was “consolidated” with other offices, according to an FAS spokesperson. As of press time it was not clear if it would exist as a standalone entity, although FAS leaders said students would continue to have access to writing tutors and that all current tutors could continue in their roles.
Faculty members reacted with dismay. “It’s really difficult for me to wrap my head around why this top-notch, highly utilized student resource was eliminated,” said sociology professor Jocelyn Viterna. Bernbaum professor of literature Deidre Lynch called the decision “shocking and embarrassing.” A group of former tutors published an open letter—which quickly drew more than 100 signatures, plus 11 pages of comments from current and former tutors—condemning both the consolidation of the Writing Center and Rosenzweig’s dismissal as “reckless.”
Much of the outcry focused on Rosenzweig, the Writing Center’s director for 22 years, whom colleagues described as crucial to the program’s success. In a letter to dean of undergraduate education Amanda Claybaugh, Mary Lewis, the Goelet professor of French history and the history department’s director of undergraduate studies, wrote, “It was [Rosenzweig’s] leadership, expertise, and mentoring that made the Writing Center a valuable place to work and to learn.”
A similar outpouring greeted the University’s announcement in late July that it was shuttering the Dudley Community by the end of August. Originally founded in 1935, the community has long provided a social home for those living outside the House system, while also offering the academic resources of a traditional House, including a resident dean and specialty tutors. Most Dudley affiliates live off campus, but some are residents of the Dudley Co-Op, located a few blocks from Harvard Yard and playfully nicknamed the “Center for High Energy Metaphysics.” A tight-knit community where students share a kitchen and housekeeping chores, cooking and cleaning for each other, the co-op will remain open this academic year for the 16 undergraduates who are assigned to live there; after that, the University plans to move all students into the House system.
Hours after the news broke, a Whats-App group chat sprang up, with current and former co-op residents and Dudley Community members sharing stories and commiserations. Within two days, it had grown to include more than 350 alumni, with graduation years spanning decades. “I’m utterly devastated,” said former co-op resident Aaryan Rawal ’26, echoing the sentiments of numerous others. “They just took out a really important part of student life.”
Meanwhile, as layoffs began to mount—by early August, dozens of positions had reportedly been eliminated, and many others reconfigured—HUCTW organizers said they were increasingly alarmed. “As far as we can tell,” Barbash said, “they’re merging departments and cutting positions, but they’ve taken no steps to actually reduce the workload. That’s one of the biggest things we’re worried about, that they’ll lay too many people off, and the staff who are left will be overwhelmed.”
FAS leaders argue that fundamental changes are needed because the division’s current financial situation is untenable.
FAS leaders argue that fundamental changes are needed because the division’s current financial situation is untenable. At a faculty meeting last fall, Hoekstra laid out a sobering picture of financial problems fueled in part by recent difficulties—a looming tax hike on the University’s endowment, which Harvard officials project will cost the FAS an extra $98 million per year (their estimates for the cost to the University as a whole range between $200 and $300 million), and uncertainty about the future of federal funding.
The bleak financial assessment feels like a reversal from the previous few years: until 2025, when federal funding upheavals contributed to an $8 million annual deficit, the division’s annual financial statements had shown budget surpluses. But Safra professor of economics Jeremy Stein, a member of the working group who has closely analyzed the division’s finances, said those statements gave a misleading impression of the FAS’s financial health, because standard accounting practices don’t fully capture the costs of sometimes centuries-old facilities. “We’re spending $400 million dollars a year just to keep the buildings from crumbling,” Stein said in an interview.
Indeed, a 2021 report from a working group convened by then-FAS dean Claudine Gay raised concerns about deferred maintenance on the division’s more than 250 aging buildings. On top of that, the FAS built or acquired an additional 1.2 million square feet of space in the early 2000s, expanding its physical footprint by 15 percent. Right now, Stein said, the division is $1.4 billion in debt to the central University. Much of that money was borrowed to support facilities and equipment, including recent renovations and construction projects.
FAS leaders have said that in designing the overhaul, their priority was to protect teaching and research, and to put the division on a more sustainable footing in order to weather future financial or political headwinds.
More program cuts and layoffs are expected through mid-August, although the new organizational structure will not be fully up and running until weeks into the fall semester, in part because of state labor laws that require employees be given a 60-day notice before mass layoffs take effect. The layoffs and reallocation of responsibilities are scheduled to be complete by mid-October—by which point students and faculty may have a clearer view of how these changes will shape life on campus.
