Forget 1), Richard. On 2) and 3) the issue is this: we used to have entirely separate Deans of the College and of Undergraduate Education, both reporting to the Dean of FAS. When Harry Lewis stopped being the former, the positions were merged and Dick Gross took over the single deanship. Very important in this change was a new position, namely Deputy Dean of HC, currently vacant I think. Many found problems with the policies and attitudes of the person occupying this position, but the position itself made some sense, once the separation had occurred. If the current structure is to be maintained, then the deputy dean should probably be an FAS faculty member, maybe Harvard College alum to boot, not a) somebody outside the culture who understands neither faculty nor student issues; or b) a professional administrator.
 

Me again.
 

what an interesting thread below on Caroline Hoxby. Several posters, namely 'anonymous' and 'Standing Eagle' appear to be challenging Hoxby. Their argument is that, since she chose to talk to the WSJ and the BG she and her husband will now have to endure that Harvard administrators might, in private, have to destroy their character. Sounds like blackmail. Wouldn't it be easy to ask her to sign a non-disparaging agreement as part of her separation package?

Let's hope that 'anonymous' and Standing Eagle have in fact nothing to do with the Harvard administration. If they were this form of harrassment of faculty from the administration would be totally unbecoming and would provide grounds for very serious challenges to the University.
 

Why can't anyone tell the difference between disparagement (the kind of thing featured in lawsuits and on Entertainment Tonight) and descriptions of academic realities?

It's very odd that my comments in fulsome praise of Hoxby in several praises don't inoculate me against the charge that I'm interested in assassinating her character or her husband's.

Odd too that those with this theory about how Harvard is a negative place to work, because people criticize you (not that I disagree with this), are the first to snipe at decision-makers without having either any information or the barest understanding of the arguments put forward in this space.

For what it's worth, I DON'T think there were good arguments for unifying the College's deanship. The whole thing was a ruse to get rid of Harry Lewis. But what matters now is that someone with a vision about college education, including a holistic view of student life and experience, gets tapped -- and that said person is capable of leading and delegating effectively. It could be two people, or a hydra-headed Deangamesh, or whatever. Leadership will mean strength of character, not caring overmuch about being liked, and VERY strong communication skills.

Let's step away from the trumped-up personality dramas unless we can at least understand the fact that there are other categories of decision-making factor in a University.

Standing Eagle
 

Actually, SE, the unification was, as I understand, a recommendation of the (Harry) Lewis-Maull report of some years before the 2000-06 era, but I agree its implementation was used for the purpose you specify. On balance I agree there should be two equal deanships, and it would be good if we got a discussion going on that as faculty respond to Mike Smith's letter. Failing that, a deputy dean should, in my view, be a faculty member. Many reasons for that. Just one: housemasters were reporting to the deputy dean a year or two ago, and many of them found that very corporate in very bad and unhelpful ways.

On the other matter, I'm with you all the way, and on the distinction you make. I also wonder why 9:02 didn't post below instead of here.
 

I didn't wish to sound quite so absolute in my suggestion that the two Deanships be separated once again. It just seemed to me that there was way too much work for a single Dean of the College/or of Undergraduate Education to deal with at once.
Whether we return to two separate deans or one with a deputy dean, the two people need to be a good fit. Too bad Hillary is running for president: otherwise we could have her as Dean of the College to oversee undergraduate education and battle grade inflation, and Bill as deputy dean and fun czar. Just as long as the creen doesn't go black!
 

Oops, I meant "screen" in the last sentence of my post.
 

Oh, OK, Judith. I thought you meant Lucy Creen. Bad when psychics fade to black.

http://www.lucycreen.com/
 

I was, of course, thinking of the Clintons' spoof of the Sopranos and imagining them remodeling Loker Commmons for our students.

Do you think Lucy Creen can find out who the next Dean(s) will be?
 

I don't see that Hoxby talked to the WSJ. There is no quote from her in there. They probably just wrote the story because it was interesting. The Crimson evidently did not bother to speak to her either.
 

I agree with 9:02. We really have not seen character assassination of this ilk from Mass Hall since the Mass Hall's behind-doors attack on Cornell West. And the cases aren't parallel. In the Hoxbys case, we've got two serious, eminent scholars with great track records. They're not making hiphop cds (not to slight same). Yet, the administration is using the same slander tactics. This reminds us also of administration's slander attack on Theda Skocpol which it did none too subtly through the Crimson.

Hey Drew Faust! Hey Derek Bok! Where are you???? Wake up and smell the coffee! Mass Hall is full of people of ill will.
 

1:44,

Spare us. You're making up drama where none exists. Unless you can quote something horrible that was more than a passing potshot, you need to pipe down.

'Character assassination' is a ridiculous description for any significant element of these threads.

Moreover, this thread is supposed to be about Harvard COLLEGE.

Standing Eagle
 

Actually, the story says that Hoxby could not be reached for comment, which means they tried...
 

Also, SE... amazing. What you said. Just generally. Unless otherwise noted.
 

This thread is a mess. It's supposed to be about the Dean of Harvard College. Could we please get back to that topic?
 

What a silly comment from Richard. Choosing a dean or a deputy dean who is a career insider and isn't an administrator is a prescription for failure - which is what the last two Deans of the College produced. It was only outsiders - Summers, Kirby, and O'Brien - who started moving the College out of its decades-old quagmire. What Richard proposes is simply a return to the old days of running the College as a club for Harvard lifers.
 

9:07, you are deeply confused, and seem to be utterly unfamiliar with and ignorant about what you are saying. Just for one: your claim that Bill Kirby is an outsider. He was Chair of the History Dept., e.g.

Back to reality, I actually retract the 8:27 a.m. insistence that the deputy dean necessarily be an FAS member. It could be the sort of excellent PhD administrator driven out of FAS/choosing to leave for higher-level positions elsewhere, for which they were emininently qualified: Vince Tompkins, Beth Dougherty, David Fithian, Rory Browne, e.g.

The Dean of Undergraduate Education was always a faculty member, and there were some very good ones in my time: Glen Bowersock, Sid Verba, David Pilbeam, Bill Todd, Larry Buell, Susan Pederson, Dick Gross. Until Harry Lewis was appointed the Dean of Harvard College, that deanship was a non-academic deanship, and there were some able people in that office too.

Now, to colleagues still drafting their letter to Mike Smith (as important a letter as they will write to the Dean of FAS): Should there be an academic Dean of Undergraduate Education, whose attention is focused on curriculum, advising, etc. along with an academic Dean of Harvard College, focused on student life, athletics, pubs, houses, etc.? Or should we go with the CURRENT model (single academic dean + deputy)? Das ist die Frage. If you favor the former, bring it up, since it won't otherwise happen. I myself could go either way and will say so. Picking the right people is the issue.
 

Apologies again, 9:49 was me.
 

I admire your faith in Smith's desire for input from the faculty. But I somehow doubt that he is going to read those letters while on vacation, and, as I recall, DG is leaving VERY SOON. If someone is not waiting in the wings, then this is a very bad time to go on vacation.
 

The Internets failed me, but in the New Yorker archive I found the reference I was looking for. The 9:07 commenter, with his or her startling and unsupported defense of the policy initiatives or spiritual excellence of Pat O'Brien, reminded me of it so strongly that I wasted a good fifteen minutes finding it.

Here it is.

"Hurrying toward Shiloh through the pages of Mr. W.E. Woodward's 'Meet General Grant,' a book published eight years ago, which I only recently came upon -- in the lobby of a summer hotel -- I ran into a provocative marginal note, indignantly written in pencil, on page 73. In the middle of that page occurs this sentence by Mr. Woodward: 'James K. Polk, an insignificant Tennessee politician, who was almost unknown to the American people, was nominated by the Democrats...' The pencilled note in the margin opposite this said sharply, 'Governor of Tennessee. Twice Speaker of the House of Representatives. The Jackson leader in the fight against the U.S. Bank. Almost unknown?'

"I left General Grant and Mr. Woodward to shift for themselves, and gave myself up to quiet contemplation of this astonishing note. Here was the bold imprint of a person who, eighty or more years after Polk's death, could actually give three facts about the man. I was moved to wonder and a kind of admiration for this last of the Polk men, rising up so unexpectedly out of that margin, shaking a white, tense fist, defending his hero. For of all our array of Presidents there was none less memorable than James K. Polk....

"James K. Polk seemed destined to be overshadowed by other men.... He was even overshadowed by his wife. It seems that at a reception following Polk's inaugural, someone said to Mrs. Polk, 'Madam, you have a very genteel assemblage tonight.' To which Mrs. Polk replied, 'Sir, I have never seen it otherwise.' It wasn't very much, to be sure, but it was something; it has lived a hundred years. The President himself that night does not appear to have opened his trap.

"One begins to feel sorry for poor Mr. Polk and the oblivion that has fallen upon him. Here is a President of the United States unremembered for any deed, unremembered even for any anecdote. I am for the formation of a Society for the Invention of Amusing Anecdotes about James. K. Polk. I am willing to suggest a few myself to get the thing started...." &c.;, &c.;
-- James Thurber, "Something about Polk," August 8, 2024


All of which is a long of way of asking our most recent Left-Field Anonymous whether he or she has any basis for defending the vision of undergraduate education promulgated by Patricia O'Brien, former business-school dean and extraordinarily unskilled motivator of excellence in the administration of higher education.

I haven't heard anyone defending her lo these many months. Can you say why you think she was part of the solution at Harvard College, and not part of one or more problems?

Or perhaps you can give us a memorable anecdote about her. The ones I know are all about her forgettability....

Standing Eagle


PS. Where are all the posts about how good is the news of Prof. Gross's departure? It's very good news.
 

9:59, DG leaves August 31. Plenty of time, and MS seems so far to be a man who seeks and listens to advice and makes good decisions. The fact that he has not been very visible in FAS-wide matters means he will likely value points of view that actually make sense. So, colleagues, scribble away.
 

The Crimson seems to be running a photo series on Dean Gross. The one with the tie just changed to a sort of barbecue-caretaking short sleeve. Both quite congenial, but is this the extent of undergrad reaction? Have lightnings and thunders their furies forgotten? This is a dead time for your Harvard undergrad activity of course, and that's why the timing was smart.
 

Standing Eagle, you have a nerve. Why don't you read your posting of
June 19, 8.40 again. What was your intent with this post? Where you trying to suggest that Dr. Hoxby's research and teaching was worthy of tenure at Harvard?

If you are a member of the Harvard administration why don't you comment upon the fact that the only sad thing about the Hoxbys is that two smart and outstanding scholars and teachers are leaving Harvard. And they are leaving Harvard not because this was their first choice, nor because one of them went through a tenure committee and found not worthy of tenure.

They are leaving Harvard for the very same reasons that a number of scholars have left in the last few years. Because a very small number of ADMINISTRATORS in the President's and Provost's Office have taken upon themselves the authority to decide who can and who cannot be put forth through an ad-hoc.

This is OUTRAGEOUS, a real SCANDAL. It represents the abrogation of senior faculty of their responsability to people who are not qualified or authorized to do the job of shaping Harvard's future senior faculty. This is Summers' legacy to Harvard, the defiguration of the proper role of the faculty.

It is UNTRUE that the English Department did not want to put Dr. Hoxby forth for tenure. That decision was made above that Department and prior to having all senior members of that department consider it.

I understand why you, if indeed you are a member of the Harvard administration with some responsibility for what is described here, would be concerned that the Hoxby's have chosen not to retreat in silence but to speak up and explain what happened from their point of view. Until now the only reason those at Harvard who have abused their prerrogatives as admnistrators have gotten away with it because no one has come out publicly to expose this aberrant state of affairs.

Good for Blair and Caroline Hoxby that they are secure enough in who they are as scholars that are not intimidated by the tactics that seem to have served Mass Hall in the past so well. Their willingness to put forth their own narrative will serve them well in the end. And perhaps, as more people follow their example, this will expose those at Harvard who have usurped powers vested in the faculty.

You, Standing Eagle, may or may not see how bad Harvard looks with this departure. A number of those implicated in the administration end up with egg on their faces as intellectual minions improperly discharging their duties.

It takes true scholars like Blair and Caroline Hoxby to help Universities live up to the values they represent. Their departure to Stanford shows that, at least at present, those values are more at home in Palo Alto than they are in Cambridge.
 

This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
 

Sorry, GSE poster. You know those rhetorical questions of yours drive me nuts. Why don't you just come out and make a point?
 

Anon 7:20, you write:

---Because a very small number of ADMINISTRATORS in the President's and Provost's Office have taken upon themselves the authority to decide who can and who cannot be put forth through an ad-hoc.---

Without specifics, it's hard to tell if you're being paranoid or you have a legitimate point. Who are these mysterious administrators?
 

"It is UNTRUE that the English Department did not want to put Dr. Hoxby forth for tenure. That decision was made above that Department and prior to having all senior members of that department consider it."

7:20,
This is new information and seems, unless there's some technicality in one of the two claims I'm not understanding, to contradict the claim in the Chronicle article excerpted in the last thread, that "The English department declined to consider offering tenure to Mr. Hoxby this spring." I was reacting to that sentence in the Chronicle and to the public information on Dr. Hoxby's area of specialization, which (I repeat) is quite narrow and is broadening recently not into English and American literature and languages but into European theatrical traditions.

If only 'some' senior members of the Department made this decision, you seem to be claiming that there's a failure of leadership within the *Department,* such that its point people in interactions with the administration don't know or don't express properly the sentiments of the Department at large.

As to your other question, "why don't you comment upon the fact that the only sad thing about the Hoxbys is that two smart and outstanding scholars and teachers are leaving Harvard?" -- I submit that I was the first responder on this blog to the news of Prof. H's departure, and I wrote "This is a great loss. Prof. Hoxby was super in faculty meetings and in teaching contexts." I don't know anything about B. Hoxby's work except what I've posted here.

If you could follow the thread of the argument I've been trying to make about departmental identity and decision-making (a general argument, admittedly, not one based on any special knowledge of this case), you'd know that it makes no sense to construe my posting about Dr. BH's work as speaking either to 'worthiness' or 'unworthiness'. Academic distinctions are simply more complicated than that, in my decently large experience of humanities departments, and are not reducible to a score on some uniform Worthiness Scale. Academic judgments have qualitative components as well as quantitative ones, and that separates them decisively from the Siskel-&-Ebert school of evaluation as well as from the WWF black-hat-vs.-white-hat school of narrative-building. My point was only that Dr. BH's specializations are not self-evidently an easy fit with the work of a given English Department, and still less with the kinds of projects generally underway in the Harvard English Department. It's not always easy to visualize plunking the economics-meets-modern-selfhood guy into a generic 'Renaissance' slot (or 'early modern,' or whatever). Without any real inside knowledge I can't know that this was the reason he wasn't snapped up, but I was trying to stave off the inevitable "What does the English Department have against the goal of there being more black female economists at Harvard?" line of inquiry.

All those disparaging insinuations about your insights having been made, I should acknowledge that you seem to be claiming some inside facts, and maybe it's only your tone that makes me think you're not understanding things as fundamental as all this. This last sentence of yours is particularly interesting: "This is Summers' legacy to Harvard, the defiguration of the proper role of the faculty."

So who is it that you think is calling the shots at the moment? And is this legacy necessarily going to persist or can a new Dean of FAS get some reins in the right places again?

In general, too, lest I seem to be evading the charge: None of my posts here have anything to do with any administrative agenda, personal or systemic.

Also, Richard, since at least one very good decision was made in the Yard recently -- could we have a new thread on Dick Gross's departure? Or on the excellence of my post about J.K. Polk (a labor of love, by the way)?

Standing Eagle
 

"the authority to decide who can and who cannot be put forth through an ad-hoc"

Is this authority not itself ad hoc? Where SHOULD it reside, if not in the offices you mention? Surely you can't file paperwork from somewhere else triggering the creation of an ad-hoc process: that it would make it not ad hoc.

Standing Hawk
 

"Dr. Hoxby's area of specialization, which (I repeat) is quite narrow"

Just a clarification that in my field at least 'narrow' is NOT a disparaging term. Quite the contrary.

SE
 

Why is Standing Eagle obsessed with O'Brien? My point, again, is that the College stagnated under insiders - a fact widely accepted at other elite colleges and confirmed by years of COFHE data - and that people who had lives outside Harvard and administrative experience - mainly Summers and Kirby, for whom O'Brien worked - were trying to take power from the Harvard shut-ins who had failed the College and its students for so long and continue to do so today. Standing Eagle doth protest too much. When Mike Smith picks a new dean, let's see if he tilts towards the shut-ins or the big, wide world .
 

Many elements of the U.S. government stagnated in the nineties under government 'insiders' as well. But that doesn't mean that George W. Bush, the outsider with no relevant experience, didn't break them.

There's frying pans and then there's magma.



I'm all for the big wide world but maybe big institutions should quit pretending that business degrees or skill in macroeconomics are the only 'real-world' credentials imaginable. It's a caricature of our society to think that money people are the only doers. And it's an offensive one. I worry that it suffuses the new curriculum too, with its cartoon concept of 'the real world.'

Standing Eagle
 

I'm puzzled by the way 9:11 AM characterizes Bill Kirby. It seems bizarre to put him in the same category as Larry Summers, especially since it was Summers who sacked Kirby. That action was one of the main triggers for the Feb. 7, 2006, FAS meeting where many people, including myself, asked pointed questions of Larry Summers. (For the record, I would add that this meeting was also the one where one of those questioners spoke about the Shleifer affair in a way that alerted us to its full implications for FAS -- a matter that could bear much more reflection than the sporadic mentions that have emerged in this blog from time to time.)
 

Why are YOU obsessed with O'Brien, 9:11? She worked for Dick Gross, by the way, that's what "deputy" means. And a disastrous team it was, as everyone but you seems to know. Kirby did his PhD at Harvard, was chair of History, as has been pointed out. He wasn't trying to do anything but follow Summers' orders. Looks like there's still a little work to be done cleaning out University Hall.
 

Interesting that 9:11 says Deputy Dean O'Brien worked for Pres. Summers (who was three reporting steps above her). That was one of the ways in which Mass Hall was felt to be micromanaging University Hall.

By the way, the famous COFHE data, which led to fun czars, cafes, and pubs (all fine, I guess), were never scrutinized or analyzed properly. Believe me: we were given mindless power-point show-and-tell sessions on Faculty Council in 2004 or so, with any nuanced questions ignored. It was just announced that "teaching is bad at Harvard", "advising is bad at Harvard", etc. If you break the data down you in fact see that in some, mostly very large, departments - surprise, surprise - that is the case, while in others, mostly but not always smaller and medium that is distinctly not the case. My own department in fact did very well against the same ones at Princeton and Yale.

Why were the data never broken down so as to see which departments were not doing so well, so that real steps might be taken to change the teaching/advising cultures of specific departments?
 

A final, probably futile effort to get through the diversions and smokescreens:

1. Summers and Kirby and others had spent years at other important institutions. They could see the College for what it was.

2. They disagreed on much, but recognized the stagnation in the College and its clear confirmation in the COFHE data. (This is sophisticated, systematic data on all dimensions of student academic and social life at about 30 top schools.)

3. Hence, Lewis was fired and others were brought in to start making long overdue changes.

4. All this ended when Summers and Kirby were ousted.

5. Now, with an inexperienced president and FAS dean, it seems likely that the College will continue to be run by and for a small clique of activist, FAS insiders.
 

I don't know exactly how you define "Harvard insiders," 12.29. I myself taught at Smith College for 18 years before coming to Harvard. My degrees are not from Harvard, either.
When you say that "all this ended when Summers and Kirby were ousted," you make it sound as if these were part of the same trend or movement, whereas they were two very different events. Summers fired Kirby, as I said before. It simply isn't fair--or even correct--to put Kirby in the same camp as Summers.
 

12:29 --

I'm not sure I disagree with that version of events (although you're begging the question of the *relevance* of the key players' previous experience -- many 'important institutions' are not even remotely similar to each other, and very very few are like Harvard University).

So your overall point has some legitimacy.

But as Prof. T. points out, there's a real question about whether the "long overdue changes" being made were any good. The proof of any pudding, foreign or domestic, big-wide-worldly-wise or homespun, is in the eating of that dish. Schmeckt er gut? Das war die Frage. I am confident that with a few exceptions the answer is NEIN.

I think the COFHE data DID show some important problems. O'Brien was quite good at articulating why this was so. The numbers overall were quite solid indeed, and dismaying. But her crew *could not* analyze the data with anything like the specificity or insight required to design solutions. There was a total lack of insight about college education and the values that should underlie it, even when those values were well articulated elsewhere in the heritage of the school. The resulting initiatives were Band-Aids, and often quite wrongheaded.

It is not a coincidence that O'Brien left, much against her will, at the same time that Pres. Summers did. (It is however a horrible coincidence that she had a family tragedy soon afterward. To this day I hesitate to criticize her.) So there's some reason to consider her name a particularly interesting one when considering change at the College in the wake of Summers's presidency.

One has no interest in seeing 'insiders' coming in to replace Gross and his crew. One does however think the new leaders should know something about college -- and not in the way that the three chuckleheaded 'fun czars' have known about "COLLEGE (dude)." They need to be educational visionaries with backbone. Intelligent gladhanding should we well down the list of crucial qualifications.

Meanwhile, during my morning work in the out of doors (cryptic, eh?), I came up with several initial entries for the contest I propose: best Daily Show headline for Dick Gross's ouster. They are appended with my best wishes.

Standing Eagle


'Daily Show' Headline Candidates for Dick Gross's Ouster

1. GROSS OUT
2. BENEDICT SHUNNED
3. STICK A FORK IN THAT DOZEN DOZEN, COUSIN
4. CHANGES THAT WERE OVER D.U.E. (an arcane reference to BG's old title there)
5. EXIT BENEDICT (give it a second or two)
6. LAST EEL DAY
7. um -- BENNY JETS ?

I'm out of gas. Your move.
 

This is interesting. Read between the lines:

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=502857