The past several days saw a flurry of major changes—and an outcry in response—as the restructuring effort in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) picked up speed.
Late last week, College leaders laid off a number of employees—eliminating 36 positions, according to a Crimson report, equivalent to 13 percent of the school’s staff. Among them was Jane Rosenzweig, the longtime director of the Harvard College Writing Center. A FAS spokesperson said he could not yet specify whether the center would continue as a standalone entity, but said in a statement that “several offices and functions within the College have been consolidated, including the Writing Center. Importantly, students will continue to be able to work with writing tutors and access other resources previously provided by the Center.”
Then on Wednesday, Harvard announced the shuttering of the Dudley Community, which provides advising, social resources, and housing to undergraduates living outside Harvard’s traditional House system. In an email to affected students, Thomas Dunne, the College’s dean of students, wrote that Dudley “will conclude its role as a separate undergraduate community later this month,” sending Dudley-affiliated students into the House system. Students and resident tutors assigned to the Dudley Co-Op, the community’s associated residence on Sacramento Street, will be able live there through the 2026-27 academic year.
That same day, a message emailed to FAS employees announced a new round of layoffs and job modifications. These changes will affect the division’s central operations: administration and finance, faculty affairs, communications and marketing, institutional research, and academic culture and community. Staff members were set to be notified about the status of their jobs on Thursday.
Signed by Edgerly family dean Hopi Hoekstra and FAS dean of finance and administration Warren Petrofsky, the email also spelled out for the first time a specific timeline for completing the overhaul: although FAS staff members will be notified of layoffs and job changes in August, the new organizational model will not be fully up and running until mid-October. (In part, that’s because of state labor laws, which require that employees be given a 60-day advance notice before mass layoffs take effect.) “[We] are moving forward as quickly and thoughtfully as possible,” Hoekstra and Petrofsky wrote, “while also honoring our legal and labor obligations.”
Responses to these developments were swift and, in some cases, vehement. Within days of Rosenzweig’s layoff, a group of former tutors had published an open letter—which drew more than 100 signatures, and 11 pages of comments from current and former tutors—condemning both her dismissal and the decision to consolidate the Writing Center as “reckless.” Addressed to Hoekstra, Harvard president Alan Garber, Danoff dean of the College David Deming, and dean of undergraduate education Amanda Claybaugh, the letter argued, “It is particularly dismaying to see Harvard deprioritize writing and hamstring a crucial resource for undergraduate learning at a moment of profound change across higher education,” referring to the upheavals caused by AI.
A FAS spokesperson said that students will continue to have access to writing tutors and that the University is not reducing its direct support for tutoring. All current tutors, he said, can continue in their roles. The Crimson reported that the Writing Center’s services will now be provided through the University’s Academic Resource Center, a more general advising hub for students seeking support and assistance with their coursework, but a FAS spokesperson did not confirm that report.
The FAS spokesperson shared a statement from Claybaugh, which he said was written in response to the open letter: “It's poignant to hear how much the Writing Center, and Jane Rosenzweig, have meant for your education, and I can certainly understand why you have questions about what will follow from this change. Let me hasten to assure you that I share your conviction that the teaching of writing is the teaching of thinking—and that there is nothing more crucial to a liberal arts education. For that reason, we are committed to ensuring that the work of the writing tutors continues on as before, with the same tutors, trained in the same ways, doing the same invaluable work with students. I would be very surprised if the students seeking out tutoring this year will be able to tell the difference.”
In a week of confusion over the writing center’s future, some faculty members expressed shock and dismay about the changes. “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, adding that most undergraduates arrive at Harvard without skills in academic writing, which requires the ability to think and ask questions critically, analyze evidence, refine their own ideas, and formulate concise arguments.
Bernbaum professor of literature Deidre Lynch called the changes to the Writing Center “shocking and embarrassing” and questioned whether its work would be as effective as part of a consolidated office. “Writing is not just another discipline,” she said. “It’s foundational. It underlies everything about a Harvard education, as the Expository Writing requirement recognizes.” The Writing Center is so essential, she added, that she includes a link to it on all her syllabi, along with a link to an online guide to using sources in academic papers, written by Rosenzweig.
The Writing Center typically employs 25 to 30 student tutors, who provide one-on-one consultations to undergraduates on everything from first-year writing exercises to senior theses to graduate school application essays. Tutors hold more than 1,000 individual conferences with students every semester, according to a statement in the open letter, and appointment times are often booked out a week in advance.
Many of those who spoke out this week described Rosenzweig as essential to the Writing Center’s success. Rivka Hyland ’16, a former tutor and one of the open letter’s original signatories, recalled the extensive training and supervision she and other tutors experienced under Rosenzweig. “It changed how I thought about both writing and teaching writing,” Hyland wrote in an email to Harvard Magazine. Mary Lewis, the Goelet professor of French history and the history department’s director of undergraduate studies, shared the text of a letter she wrote to Claybaugh in response to the dean’s statement: “It was [Rosenzweig’s] leadership, expertise, and mentoring,” she wrote, “that made the Writing Center a valuable place to work and to learn…You say nothing will change for the peer tutors, while upending a structure that allowed them to be effective.”
Rosenzweig, who declined to comment, led the center for 22 years and taught Expository Writing courses in the College. In recent years, she has also become a prominent voice probing the effects of AI on writing and learning, a topic on which she also wrote and taught. She developed a three-part training module on AI for students, which this spring the College began incorporating into all Expository Writing courses. “She is the person who should be updating it regularly as AI capacities evolve,” Lewis wrote in her letter. “In the rapidly changing world of AI, having skilled writing instructors has never been more important.”
A similar uproar greeted the University’s announcement about plans to shutter the Dudley Community. Originally founded in 1935, the community has long provided a social home for those living outside the House system, while also offering the academic and advising resources of a traditional House, including a resident dean and a host of specialty tutors. Most Dudley affiliates live off campus, but some are residents of the Dudley Co-Op, an alternative living community located a few blocks from Harvard Yard in a pair of Victorian-era houses. There, students share a kitchen and housekeeping chores, garden and manage the building together, and cook and clean for each other. Current and former residents describe it as a tight-knit community whose deep ties persist long after graduation.
According to a Harvard spokesperson, the co-op currently has 16 residents—although in past years there have been as many as 32—and a total of 59 students currently belong to the wider Dudley Community. In his email on Wednesday, Dunne said that the decision to close the community “is not a reflection on the value of Dudley, the quality of its programs, or the dedication of the people who have sustained it over the years.” He added that off-campus students would be asked to re-affiliate with their former House communities and transfer students affiliated with Dudley will be assigned to a House instead. Students already signed up to live in the co-op will get to keep those housing assignments through the end of the academic year, after which a Harvard spokesperson said, the University plans to move all students into the House system.
“I’m utterly devastated,” said Aaryan Rawal ’26, who moved into the co-op during his sophomore year. “The University claimed to be trimming administrative functions that shouldn’t touch student life,” he said, referring to the FAS restructuring effort, “but they just took out a really important part of student life.”
In the hours after the decision was announced, Rawal said, a WhatsApp group chat sprang up, with current and former co-op residents and Dudley Community members sharing stories and commiserations. By Thursday it had swelled to include more than 350 alumni, with graduation years spanning decades. “This community has touched so many people,” Rawal said.
More than a dozen of them reached out to Harvard Magazine. “What a tragedy,” former co-op resident Jo Guldi ’01, now a professor at Emory University, said about the decision to shutter the Community, which for her, she said, was “a site of intellectual and moral awakening.” Matthew Climan ’18 called it the “single most impactful and meaningful part” of his time at the University. Many described the community as a haven for students who don’t quite fit in elsewhere at Harvard or don’t feel at home in the House system. More than one said they would not have graduated without the Dudley Community. “The winter of my freshman year, I was looking into transferring,” said Beth Potter ’13, who moved to the co-op as a sophomore. She’s now an archaeology researcher at the University of Kansas.
Others talked about the practical skills and sense of agency they’d picked up from planning dinners for 40-plus people, coordinating chores, maintaining a garden, and facilitating meetings. “I mean, every night, one of us had to bake six to eight loaves of bread,” said writer Molly Dektar ’12, whose 2019 novel The Ash Family was influenced by her co-op life.
For non-traditional students like Kai DeJesus, who took two leaves from the College for health reasons and is returning this fall as a 25-year-old senior, the Dudley Community is a lifeline, she said. “When I came back, I really didn’t know many people at the University anymore.” DeJesus will live in the co-op this year.
Co-op alumni argued that the effects of closing the Dudley Community will be felt beyond its small membership. Sofía Escudero ’16, a therapist who now lives in a cooperative housing community on the West Coast, said, “I think if it goes away, that’s just one fewer avenue for any student who needs proof of concept that alternative paths exist through Harvard, that there’s not just one way to do it.”
