“Traditionally, Harvard has had a great deal of school autonomy. The old label that was often used was ‘every tub on its own bottom,’” Laibson says.

“During President Summers’ tenure as president, we’ve moved towards a system that has a more active center,” he adds.

But Laibson says he does not believe Harvard is more centralized than any other university.

However, Phyllis and Morton Keller, authors of Making Harvard Modern, highlight schools where faculty have a somewhat greater degree of decision-making power than is standard in a top-down system, including Stanford, where a Faculty Senate has authority in promotion decisions.

PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE

Even as Faculty members call for change in the university’s governance structure, they disagree over the extent of the reforms needed—and their opinions rest on whether they believe Harvard’s problem is with its current leadership or with its underlying administrative structure.

Some say that faculty can take on a greater role in decision-making only if Harvard shifts toward a collegial model, while others advocate working within the existing top-down system.

“I think that...something positive that can come out of this, and some of my colleagues have called for this in a public way, would be to have more genuine faculty governance at Harvard,” says Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France and Professor of Comparative Literature Susan R. Suleiman. “I think there has been a tendency to get more and more top-heavy with administration. Many members of the Faculty have been feeling very frustrated.”

For a collegial model to work, the currently-divided Faculty would have to commit to some shared view of how the University should operate.

Professor of the History of Science Everett I. Mendelsohn says he believes that if Harvard adopted a collegial model, faculty would be willing to take on any new responsibilities necessary.

“Where a collegial mode of operation exists, people expect to carry on more responsibility,” he says. “I believe that faculty members could indeed become committed to a shared vision. I believe there’s a lot of overlap that goes on even at this point of shared vision.”

Another senior faculty member, who asked to remain anonymous, says that the university’s governance structure could be improved by extending faculty meetings—currently an hour and a half long—to two hours, so that faculty would have more of an opportunity to interact with the administration.

“I think the actual structure of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences is a reasonably good one,” the professor said. “[Longer faculty meetings] bring the president and the Faculty into a circle of decision-making.”

Laibson says the issue is not one of an imbalance of the power held by FAS compared to the president—a problem many say a collegial model would solve—but one of a need for a different mode of communication between Summers and the FAS.

“The complaints from some faculty...are not so much about mis-balance but about a style of communication and a quality of discourse,” Laibson says. “We need to find a communication style that makes everyone feel comfortable at the table.”

Tronto says that another possible solution within the top-down model would involve decentralizing administrative power and sharing the decision-making process with professors.

“One way is to make a larger institutional commitment to transparency. It’s possible to create forums for people to express disapproval without it having to build up to a point of explosion,” she says.

—Staff writer Sara E. Polsky can be reached at polsky@fas.harvard.edu.