But within a week, he announced that he would abandon the plan.

Saying he had never wished to restrict student flexibility he said that he remained “open to any plausible solution to the problems that we face.”

Faculty remain critical not only of the proposal, but also of the way it was handled.

“Preregistration blindsided him a bit,” Mendelsohn says. “My guess is that on the next round he will put it out in a more cautious way.”

“Clearly someone should have been more in touch when it was clear that it was a widespread problem,” he adds. “The best way is to sound out faculty opinion and build a coalition in advance.”

Next Year’s Test

Coalition-building will be imperative to pushing through a new curriculum, the next major item on Kirby’s agenda.

By the end of next year, four committees will have drafted recommendations for major revisions to a Harvard undergraduate education.

Invoking Harvard’s “rich modern history of self-examination,” Kirby kicked the review in a letter to professors last October.

“The number of recent changes alone suggests the need for a holistic curricular review, to understand better the interactions among various parts of our undergraduate education,” he wrote.

Thus far, professors have praised the consultative and deliberative style with which Kirby has begun the curricular review, soliciting e-mails from faculty, students and alumni and raising the issue at meetings of the full Faculty and the Undergraduate Council.

“I have seen a real commitment to hearing what people think need to be looked at,” Galison says. “No doubt Bill has his own ideas, but his style has been to listen and meet with large numbers of people.”

“He’s a leader, and at the same time he is committed to collaboration and consultation,” says Wolfson Professor of Jewish Studies Jay M. Harris, who chairs the committee on overall academic experience. “He makes you feel like you’re part of the processes.”

But once a set of recommendations are ready to be put before the Faculty, consultation alone won’t enable Kirby to see their implementation through.

History shows that rallying the faculty behind any new curriculum is a trying task.