But Mallinckrodt Professor of Applied Physics William Paul claims that Knowles’ implementing the faculty report’s recommendations, as Spence did not, fits a longstanding pattern.

He says deans have never followed the 1969-72 regulations requiring that the Faculty Council “exercise a general oversight over the committee structure of the Faculty [and] serve as an advisory body on decanal [dean’s] and committee appointments and will advise the Dean and the Faculty on allocations of space, building programs, and plans and priorities for Faculty growth and development.”

“Every one of these rules except the election of the Council has been broken by the Deans,” says Paul. “They do it and then they say it’s evolution…all of them built on each others’ variations of the rules. It’s a lot easier to be a benevolent dictator than to go through the process of consulting people.”

“Dean Knowles is more comfortable with appointed rather than elected committees,” agreed another senior professor. “You can avoid having people who you think might not go along.”

Knowles Intervenes

Allegations of Knowles’ autocracy have been most pronounced in instances in which he has taken a hands-on approach in mending “troubled” areas of FAS. Knowles says he has installed department chairs three times who were appointed professors in other FAS departments. In addition, he has removed faculty or staff from positions without consulting them ahead of time at least twice.

His critics allege that in these cases, Knowles intervened prematurely, giving the targets of his action no warning or opportunity to respond to his concerns.

Knowles’ first two controversial external interventions took place a month apart in the fall of 1993, when he recommended “structural” changes in both the Department of Linguistics and FAS’ Semitic Museum.

When Knowles took office, Harvard’s Linguistics department was in a shambles. It had never excelled in comparison to many of its national competitors, but by the early 1990’s the situation had become embarrassing—the department had only two tenured professors, and had not made a senior appointment since the 1960’s.

Knowles’ first step was to install Wolff, who says the department was “dysfunctional,” as Acting Chair in 1992. But Pearson professor of modern mathematics and mathematical logic Warren Goldfarb ’69 says that the department’s dire condition and FAS’ still-burgeoning budget deficit led Knowles to question Linguistics’ place in Harvard’s liberal arts curriculum.

that made him think about the linguistics department,” Goldfarb says.

According to Goldfarb, Knowles appointed him that fall to chair a committee examining how—not whether—to dissolve the department and propose a new structure, most likely a committee. Moreover, Goldfarb says, Knowles did not consult the Faculty Council before appointing the committee.