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Friday, July 21, 2024
  I Write, You Post
And not infrequently, your posts are more informed than my blogs. Such as this one from someone named "Eagle" relating to the firing of Harvard deputy dean Pat O'Brien.

With an inside perspective, I can say that this event is much more significant than your blog has noted, Richard. O'Brien was in charge of everyone who interacts with students in the College's administration (though only as a House Master did she interact with them herself). All the lines on the org-chart she drew (and re-drew, and tinkered with) ran through her before branching.

Gross made a decision here and there, and chaired the Administrative Board, but mostly he only ran the curricular review and tried to herd the faculty. O'Brien was running the college. This means House Masters, sub-deans of students, and every associate dean, curricular or otherwise.

And she knew nothing about colleges. She could be passionate on certain topics, but they never had to do with the lives and learning of 19-year-olds. She was hired by a headhunter who is worth some close investigating; a corporate category-head to whom many of the College's non-curricular problems as an educational entity can be traced directly.

More importantly, O'Brien's management style was incommunicative, ruthless, and subserved no stated educational aims. To call it 'intimidating' is to miss the point that she actually did simply and with no advance feedback fire the people who might in a merely unhealthy organization feel intimidated. And the atmosphere was: "The beatings will continue until morale improves!"

If you didn't read the job listing for a "Director of Internal Communications" for the College in the spring, you're missing out on a good sample of how survey numbers were going to be boosted under her vision (I saw it in the Globe). She believed that branding tools were what schools needed more of.

As to the larger picture: The anonymous poster above is living in a fool's paradise if s/he thinks that the elimination of Harry Lewis's position was a well-thought-through administrative adjustment. It was a way of justifying his ousting, nothing more, and for three years no one has done his job. Gross never could have intended to do it; and no one except the old guard in the building seems to understand what's missing.

O'Brien was, I hope, fired because she was lousy at her job. I understand she's a good House Master, though, so one would hope she would stay on there. And some of her campus-wide initatives might be nice grace-notes to supplement a proper rethink and re-articulation of the student experience on campus.

The larger question is whether Gross has developed good enough relationships in the faculty to allow him to survive more than a year as Dean, given how poorly things have been going in the leading of the College proper. I'd say it's three to two in favor, since Bok would probably expect the new president to need some continuity in the Dean role. (But note that O'Brien's ouster couldn't wait even a year for a new president! Significant indeed; there are many stories under here).
 
Comments:
"Standing Eagle", no less. Curious moniker. Delve.
 
In one respect, this firing fits the pattern at Harvard: women who perform poorly or about whom there is tension are blamed and humiliated and (sooner or later) dumped. Men who mess up -- Summers, Kirby, Gross -- are paid off handsomely and their dignity is protected. Hard to believe Gross will survive much longer.
 
What did she know about the hundreds of video tape shot from the 200 cameras installed in the yard, dorms and libraries under her watch? Why were copies of these videos taped from January 2005 to February 2006 given to a private security agency? What were they looking for?
 
What a mess! The College is in worse shape than I thought but at least it looks to be starting to get on track now with this firing. Probably will be many more reverberations from the ignominious reign of Larry Summers...
 
Pat O'Brien was a very poor hire for the job of deputy dean. I don't see her at all as a "woman blamed and dumped," to quote the second anonymous poster. Considering her lack of knowledge about undergraduate education, it's hard to see how she could be a good house master. My impression was that she was more concerned about social aspects of student life than about educational ones. Surely a housemaster has to be on top of both.
 
Pat was not involved in the surveillance intervention. This was not focused on students either but on bringing to justice a few lunatics who wanted to take charge of the assylum. They are on tape now sending e-mails staging faculty meetings! No Harvard funds were used to pay for this.
 
With regard to the 2:46 anonymous poster: I'm not aware of any other women who were fired because they performed poorly. There was 'tension,' perhaps, around some of the others (certainly E. S. Nathans), but that had to do with them doing their jobs WELL, not badly.

You'll note also that Kirby and Gross have tenure. Contrast Nathans, Wolcowitz, Foster, &c.;

Meanwhile (just to totally demolish this illusory gender gap) Lewis had a fairly humiliating and precipitous exit (as did Wolcowitz).

Moreover, Summers had plenty of blame and humiliation, eventually.

So what are you talking about? Could you give evidence of this sexism rather than just using the conspiratorial word 'pattern'?

To sum up: pshaw.


Standing Eagle.
 
A good House Master doesn't really need to know anything about undergraduate education; s/he just needs to show up and create things that happen in the House, and be likeable. To do this you need no knowledge of curricular matters, nor even of student social life proper (i.e., how they relate to *each other*): only an awareness of how to get students to show up to YOUR events. [Being in the Quad makes this easier anyway, since it's a schlep for students to do anything else.]

I'd make the point about O'Brien more precise: she was interested in elements the students themselves identified as leading to more satisfaction; and these tended to be social. But the social as an end in itself -- and specifically, as an EDUCATIONAL goal -- was not something she was interested in. And cross-pollination of different areas of college life didn't interest her: she categorized every piece in a different box.

Whether there is intellectual life in Currier House that the Masters foster I don't know; if so, it would be an exception to the norm in today's Houses.


Standing Eagle
 
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