The media never quite get Harvard right, but this is perhaps the worst example yet from the paper of record. Finder had shown himself to be a lazy reporter in previous stories and now he teams up with Rimer to repeat the cliches reported by others long ago, now discredited by serious observers including Bradley and even the Crimson. I suppose the contrast is too simple to resist: Summers' remarks on women, and Faust's feminist commitments. But a little basic reporting would have shown how far off this is. If they took the trouble to look at the readily available transcripts of the key faculty meetings especially in February and to interview influential faculty (many of whom like Robert Putnam spoke on the record), they might have found that by the fall almost no one believed that Summers was not supportive of women, many were not bothered by his abrasiveness at all. The issue for the faculty who were most influential was integrity. Why bother to complain again now about these negligent distortions of the history? Because it is coloring in an unfortunate way the coverage of Faust. The contrast is inaccurate on both sides, and misses so much of what is admirable and promising about Faust. The Crimson has done better, and even the Globe to some extent. The Times reporters should be ashamed of themselves.
 

Well said. Write a letter to the Times
 

Howard Gardner has written a fascinating op ed in the Crimson. On the surface it appears to be a series of musings on leadership and a general exortation to faculty to support the President... Between the lines there are astute references to the leadership at the School of Education.
 

Faustian Deal.
 

"A university leader faces the additional challenges that accompany the not-for-profit, voluntary nature of a university. The central members of such an institution—the senior faculty—are tenured for life. In the long run, their job security insulates them from motivation by fear, fiat, fist, or fury, and they remain free to move should they become dissatisfied with their leader."

So if Gardner leaves we now know what this means.
 

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate

Dante
 

They also remain free to botch their leader...
 

moving up in the U.S. News and World Report rankings—should never be allowed to trump the fundamental educational mission.

Divine!
 

There's a party going on in Cambridge, attended by many high ranking Harvard officials... the scuttlebutt? who among the Deans present would still have their job a year from now...
 

The real question is who among the Harvard Deans will still want their jobs a year from now.
 

The ones that don't want them a year from now won't have to worry since we can assume they won't have them, so no problem there I'd say.

As for the Dante, make that

Lasciate OGNI speranza, voi ch'entrate
 

The TIMES story is now very different from the one that was posted first. And the bylines are reversed. The story still distorts the history. But the surprising additions are the quotes by Richard, which are half right and half wrong.

“The real import of this choice is that it is a cautious pick, which seems targeted at healing the wounds of the Summers years and restoring Harvard’s momentum as quickly as possible,”

Half right: cautious in the sense that she is an insider and has a low key style. Bold in the sense that she is feminist and woman and head of the most radical "school" at Harvard.

But then naively Richard says:
“The fact that Harvard could not find someone who filled all their bases suggests to me the difficulty that Harvard had to fill the position." None of the candidates filled all the bases, and this is typical in any search like this. Yes, some names mentioned had more experience but only two were plausible (not Cech), and they were not available for reasons that had little to do with Harvard. Richard, don't start falling into the cliches of the national media.
 

This is quite an interesting stream of thoughts. They seem to underscore that Drew Faust needs to act swiftly to, as anon 11.11pm points out "healing the wounds of the Summers years and restoring Harvard’s momentum as quickly as possible". She will be very busy in the months ahead pondering just what those moves should be. Derek Bok, a wise man who loves Harvard, may be busier still working with her sharing what he has learned about the extent of the malaise in some schools.

Thanks anon 7.40pm for pointing out Pofessor Gardner's article. It is indeed interesting. The following section caught my eye:

"I once remarked to a new Harvard president, “You have only two powers—the ability to select deans, and the bully pulpit. And you have the bully pulpit because Harvard may or may not be the greatest university in America, but it is certainly the greatest in the world. And the world will be watching what you say and do.”

Is Gardner telling Faust that she needs to change Deans. The last paragraph in his Op Ed is a veiled warning of the consequences of maintaining Summers 'leadership team':

"And this brings me to the final lesson leadership: Leaders cannot achieve success alone. As a famous general once said, “Ah, I am their leader, I really had to follow them.” All of us who care about the institution should make their contribution to the Faust presidency, and, in that sense, members and followers can join the leadership team."

Professor Thomas. You are half right when you say:

"The ones that don't want them a year from now won't have to worry since we can assume they won't have them, so no problem there I'd say."

Isn't it possible that some of the leftovers from the Summers reign will choose to stay? This is where Bok can help sharing what he knows about real decanal competency.

An 7.50pm why the reference to the entrance to the Inferno? Who would see this change as hell?
 

Who would see this change as hell? Those who bubbled up to positionn of leadership because of the bad leadership in the University. Idiots beware!
 

Richard, I dont see why you are so sure Harvard had difficulty in filling this position. As you should know, presidential searches start out with a lot of hype about the many candidates who might be considered, but well-informed people know at the start that the pool is actually very small, even smaller in the case of Harvard. Not because the job is unattractive but because the criteria are quite demanding (and not always public). The five or six people on the well informed list from the start included Faust. Other plausible people on the list like Etchemendy, Richard, Bacaw, and Gutmann evidently had good reasons of their own to decline--reasons that had little or nothing to do with whether the Harvard job was attractive. Cech is the only case that comes close to supporting your assumption. There was a chance that he might have been offered the job, though the reports are that the committee was leaning toward Faust when he withdrew. As you must know from your conversations on campus, the best informed insiders were betting early last fall that Faust would be chosen in the end. The process was perhaps longer and more cumbersome (and maybe even "botched" in some respects, as you say), but "difficulty in filling in the position"? Not. In fact my sense is that it is rare that the candidates a committee really wants turn down an offer, or even decline to enter into the process. (There are of course ways of having serious conversations with a search commmittee without actually being a candidate). Richard, we count on you to do better than the regular press in explaining how Harvard works (if not rules).
 

Derek has an opportunity to give Harvard a gift of lasting value. In concert with Drew identify those in the 'leadership team' --particularly Deans-- that need to be replaced. Ask them to resign now and begin the process of identifying replacements way before July 1st. This would give Drew a new, supportive and capable team early on and no visible responsibility in the firings.

This is, of course, a lot to ask of a man who has already given much to Harvard. Personally he would have nothing to gain from taking responsibility for these changes and from managing the complicated politics of multiple replacement searches. But Derek is one of these unusually altruistic individuals who may just do something like this for the institution he loves so much.
 

Richard... You say that Drew's honeymoon will be the shortest in Harvard's history. This may be because there are many Summers' loyalites still in leadership positions and because Summers himself is still around, pontificating on Harvard and higher education. Can you think of ways to neutralize these most obvious sources of opposition?
 

The Times story quotes Richard Chait, a Professor at the School of Education:

“My own sense is that it’s a new template for leadership, and that probably is not unrelated to gender, but it ought not get eclipsed by it,” said Richard P. Chait, a professor of higher education at Harvard.

Dr. Chait, who studies university management, noted that in several recent changes of leadership of major American corporations, tough, even bullying leaders were replaced by more mild-mannered consensus builders."

Is this another veiled reference to leadership in the school of education?
 

Richard Chait studies the management and governance of colleges and universities. Chait has expertise on terms and conditions of faculty employment, including promotion and tenure procedures, academic freedom, and faculty evaluation. He also studies the roles, responsibilities, and performance of boards of trustees, and has written on faculty work life. For over 20 years, Chait has taught in the School's summer institute programs for executives in higher education. He has been a professor at the University of Maryland and at Case Western Reserve University, and was formerly associate provost at Pennsylvania State University. In 2001, Chait was selected by the Fulbright New Zealand Board of Directors as a Fulbright U.S. Distinguished American Scholar. He and his colleagues are studying job satisfaction of junior faculty as part of The Study of New Scholars at HGSE. He is especially interested in the underrepresentation of women and minorities in Universities.

http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/030218.html
 

The Times quote another Professor and former Dean at the School of Education. Why are there so many in that school so excited by this appointment?

"Some Harvard professors, particularly women, greeted the decision with euphoria. “Harvard’s waited a long time — since 1636,” said Patricia Albjerg Graham, an emeritus professor of the history of education at Harvard, recalling that when she was a postdoctoral fellow in 1972, she was not allowed to enter the main door of the faculty club or eat in the main dining room."
 

Drew Faust may not want much advice from Derek Bok, looking instead to her sponsors Keohane and Rudenstine. She may also take the approach quite characteristic of insider appointments of promoting her longtime friends and thinking she already knows enough about who is who and what is what. All these would be foolish moves, but that is the way it may unfold.
 

Anon 1.12 above. The comment from Patricia Graham above should be read more as the expression of support from a fellow historian, who was also once affiliated with Radcliffe. Her excitement may be unrelated to the School of Education, from which Graham has long retired.

Another historian who may be pleased is fellow Concord Academy Graduate Ellen Condliffe Lagemann. She too was a Dean at the School of Education but is not active in that school thanks to the current Dean.
 

Pizza and Bourbon anyone?