Shots in the Dark

13 Responses

• Judith Ryan
  6/28/2009 9:13 am

  I think we’ve now seen the first few stages in what is likely to be a lengthy process. We’ve seen retirement packages offered to staff, followed by a set of staff layoffs. We saw “Green is the new Crimson,” which will do some of the cost-saving Sam Spektor has talked about earlier in this thread. Food is no longer served at meetings. Section size is subject to even closer monitoring than before, and many sections have been and will be cut. Junior seminars in economics have been abolished. Many adjuncts have been told they will not be rehired, and visiting professors will be almost non-existent. There has been talk of retirement offers to faculty, but as yet we have seen no annoucement about what they might look like. We know that faculty committees are at work discussing other possible economies, including reshaping FAS. The latter may produce new mantras, such as “German is the new French”-which will pobably provoke a sharp response from Sarkozy.

  The next logical step in this process night well be, as Sam Spektor predicts, a voluntary salary cut on the part of the president, provost, and several deans. July 1st might be an appropriate time for them to do so. Once they have done that, faculty members might be more willing to go along with some version of the proportionate salary cuts that Sam, RT, and others have been talking about on this blog.

  All this and more will probably continue in a sequenced way over the next year or so. By then, Harvard will have shown fiscal discipline, and (let’s hope) the national and international financial crisis will be winding down. At that point, it might make sense to initiate the long-delayed capital campaign, to which donors might contribute because they would have seen the university practicing good behavior.

  I don’t think we’ll actually have much say in all this. To my mind, it’s a sequence of events that could be reshuffled, retimed, or tweaked along the way, but is not likely to be substantially altered. Still, we may be able to have some influence on the system used to calculate salary cuts for faculty members. To my mind, that could be the most positive outcome of the discussion (the 61 comments) on the first Black Tuesday thread, to which RB links above.

• Pioneer13
  6/28/2009 11:50 am

  ” At that point, it might make sense to initiate the long-delayed capital campaign, to which donors might contribute because they would have seen the university practicing good behavior.” I would not hold much hope for the launch of a capital campaign even as the financial crisis winds down. Poor governance and loose financial oversight were contributing factors to the budgetary crisis and virtually nothing the University has done responds to these issues; the Corporation is unchanged and the investment committee of HMC is unchanged. In fact, HMC shows a reluctance to unwind certain positions out of stubborness to see the bets vindicate their judgment. The budgetary responses—actual and proposed by Judith—are little more than taking advil when cardiac surgery is required. I’m hard pressed to see the alumni body swooping in and the University once again awash in cash. I think President Faust needs a three pronged approach: 1) let’s call it Judith cubed on the budget, 2) a rebuilt governance structure, and 3) a retooling of the investment oversight that missed the implications of an illiquid investment strategy.

• Judith cubed
  6/28/2009 12:57 pm

  “Judith cubed” is what I’ve long needed! Thank you, Pioneer 13.
  As for the capital campaign, you’re doubtless right. I suspect, though, that my projected scenario may be something like what’s going through the minds of those currently in charge. I should have put quotation marks around “fiscal discipline” and “practicing good behavior.”

• RT
  6/28/2009 4:15 pm

  You may be right, Judith. I know you don’t mean to seem sanguine about how this may all proceed, but the fact is units such as the libraries, where the mindset is very corporate, and where Faculty can only yell after the horse has bolted (we can’t even close the stable door), are in grave danger of doing themselves a damage that we won’t bounce back from.

  Since there is no tenure for the librarian leadership (at least in HCL) they are dutifully meeting the 15 and eventually ?25% cuts being asked of them, rather than enlisting faculty help to push back, and by doing so will destroy a great library.

  I know I go on about this, but it seems worth inscribing in a post that has some pretty good and maybe useful ideas sprinkled through it.

  To Pioneer 13, 1) would a “Bring back Conrad Harper movement” be worth trying? and 2) isn’t Jane Mendillo, enough of a new broom to change some of those policies, with the help of enlightened HMC Board members? Surely things aren’t that bad?

• Judith Ryan
  6/28/2009 7:31 pm

  RT, you’re quite right: I didn’t mean to seem sanguine. I feel that a scenario/schedule is unfolding in which we won’t have too much of a say. I kept rewriting my post, which I now think weakend its message. My thought was that perhaps we could make some inroads on the salary reduction issue. But, as everyone who reads this blog knows, I’m also very worried about the library. You are quite right to point out that the librarian leadership is in no position to protest against the layoffs of librarians who are crucial to the enterprise. If anyone is to support them, it will have to be us.

  Apologies for not using more signals of my cynicism in the 9:13 am post.

• RT
  6/28/2009 8:08 pm

  I didn’t find you sanguine passim, Judith, and I do think having pressure applied throughout the system can be a good way of finding fat and cutting into it, particularly if nothing is off the table, salary cuts included. But, as has been said many times, that doesn’t get us in $ terms anywhere where we (SEEM TO) need to get.

  The danger is indeed that it goes onto autopilot.

  Btw, my “dutifully” also had some irony to it. I considered “cheerfully”. HCL leadership has often followed orders with a little more alacrity than one would wish, and last week’s Nacht der langen Messer also seems to have targeted individuals and not just programs.

• Anonymous
  6/28/2009 8:22 pm

  Black Tuesday will have nothing on tomorrow.

• Judith Ryan
  6/28/2009 8:36 pm

  Tomorrow? And not Wednesday, July 1st? Fascinating…
  The program may be a little ahead of what I was predicting.

• Anxious in Holyoke
  6/28/2009 8:43 pm

  Staff in central administration will apparently find out tomorrow.

• RT
  6/28/2009 9:02 pm

  Well, good luck with it all, Anxious, and here’s hoping Harvard will help with outplacement with those who are let go. It’s galling to think how we got here.

  Keep us informed on RB’s blog. Peter Zhu et al. over at the Crimson are I think doing their shortstaffed best also.

  Cura ut valeas

• Bok Center
  6/28/2009 10:51 pm

  I’m curious about faculty reactions to the cuts at the Bok Center (http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=528512), which haven’t really been discussed here. Harvard’s reputation for valuing research over teaching was well earned, and now we see that the office whose mission is teaching is being cut more than the libraries. Is this an indication of institutional priorities? A judgment on the quality and value of the Bok Center? Or are budget cuts like this happening all around FAS and we just haven’t heard about them yet?

• RT
  6/28/2009 11:41 pm

  I’m not sure how many of us are around to react here at the end of June, Bok Center. I’m very sorry Jim Wilkinson is taking early retirement since he has been so instrumental in helping to improve the focus on undergraduate teaching in recent years. It’s hard to tell how much the Bok Center figures are temporary dips or permanent layoffs. The former I hope.

  How do you know the Bok Center is being cut more than the libraries? The relative numbers are too different to come to comparative conclusions, but you are right in your implication that there are no faculty watchdogs for the Bok Center, and that is not good, so keep posting here.

  I well remember my job interview for an assistant professorship in 1976, when as a UMichigan ABD I was being grilled by 10-12 senior faculty members. There was only one question about teaching: “How would you feel about teaching Advanced Latin Prose Composition?” The anticipation from the three distinguished senior Latinists in attendance to my 26 yr.old response was reminiscent of the old ?Smith-Barney commercials, as the investors leant forward waiting for the response: enquiring minds wanted to know, in my case, because a lot of grading, of the sort that could not be farmed out to grad student TA’s, was involved, and each of my soon-to-be dear colleagues wanted no part of the course.

  Things have changed and in my experience teaching at Harvard is much improved and is taken more seriously than it once was, though departmental COURSE LOADs across divisions need examination as resources are being scrutinized.

  Starting about five years ago new assistant professors started getting a large sum of money (?$6000) to do a workshop for a week before the fall term started. That seemed extravagant to me at the time (although I did enquire about the possibility of senior faculty signing up), and one can only guess how much the various consultants got paid to come in and give powerpoint shows. Apparently the program was pretty helpful however, and it would be good if the Bok Center could continue the effective work it has done over the last couple of decades along such lines, but in a belt-tightened sort of way.

• Bok Center
  6/29/2009 7:09 am

  Regarding the comparative cuts between the Bok Center and the libraries, I was just basing that on the Crimson article that says the Bok Center’s budget is being cut by 40 percent and the staff is being cut by a similar amount. It’s true that it probably can’t be fairly compared to the libraries, since the libraries are vastly larger.

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