Knowles now says that the committee did have the option to recommend that Linguistics maintain its departmental status. But at the time, Wolff told The Crimson “It is not the function of the committee to look into departmental reorganization… We have tried that.” Knowles says he also sent a sternly worded letter to committee members, including both of the department’s professors, advising them of the gravity of the situation.

“I quite consciously shook the bars of the cage,” Knowles says. “I knew exactly what I was doing.”

The announcement that a committee had been formed with the purpose of dissolving the department prompted tremendous opposition from both inside and outside Harvard. The department’s students formed the Harvard-Radcliffe Undergraduate Linguists Society, and Knowles received letters from linguists across the country. One concentrator, Joel L. Derfner ’95, met with Knowles that year to appeal the decision but says he found Knowles condescending and unresponsive.

In this first controversial intervention, Knowles was dealt an unexpected hand when Goldfarb’s committee reported to him the following spring. Goldfarb says the committee circumvented Knowles’ charge by proposing alternative structures for the department but said each was imprudent. Knowles never followed up.

Many faculty members say they felt Knowles’ commitment to consultation in the Linguistics case was only skin deep; he appointed a committee without giving them a full range of options.

“There was a certain amount of complaining to be sure, although it didn’t reach the level of a wholesale lack of confidence,” Goldfarb says. “There was a general wish he’d be more consultative, a general sense that he wasn’t talking to people before he acted on things.”

In the fall of 1993, when Knowles received a mandate to intervene from another hand-picked faculty committee in regards to the Semitic Museum, he acted decisively. Just one month after he announced the formation of the Linguistics committee, Knowles released the findings of this committee to members of the Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations department and museum staff.

The report, which Knowles said he released to provoke discussion of its recommendations, assailed the museum for focusing too much on public exhibitions at the expense of FAS’ needs and suggested cutting the department’s staff by two-thirds to address its $1 million deficit.

The report itself provoked the resignation of Rosovsky’s wife, Nitza, the museum’s curator of exhibitions. But two weeks after the report was circulated, with a mandate of due process and consultation in hand, Knowles told The Crimson that “some changes in structure will have to occur.” That day, he fired eight Semitic Museum staff members.

Semitic museum staff members said they felt Knowles misled them to believe that their responses to the report would influence him, and New Republic editor Martin Peretz wrote a long letter to The Crimson denouncing the firings.

“The Dean has been lying through his teeth,” William Corsetti, curator for educational planning, told The Crimson after the firings. “It was a fait accompli.”

“The conclusions were made long before our response to the report was made,” Ms. Rosovsky concurred. “I think if a year ago, we had been called and told, ‘We can’t support you,’ it would have been easier to understand and accept. [But] all of a sudden there’s a committee which says ‘Goodbye.’”

But Israel Lawrence Stager, the director of the museum who chaired the committee and was harshly criticized by staff, lauded Knowles for doing what he had to do.

“This was a high point of Knowles’ administration,” Stager says. “He didn’t buckle to outside pressure. Once he had made up his mind, he stood his ground, and for that I give him an A+.”

“It’s the job of a dean to act swiftly when a path seems clear,” agrees Tompkins.