One Tuesday each month, Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby leaves his impressive office, decorated with Oriental art, walks through a high-ceilinged corridor, and enters perhaps the most beautiful room on campus—the Faculty Room, replete with throne-like chairs and dozens of portraits of the men and women, including many former University presidents, who have made Harvard great.

At four o’clock, he takes his seat at a round table at the front of the room, just to the right of University President Lawrence H. Summers. He proceeds to observe his Faculty as, surrounded by the past, they debate and decide the future.

But to attend today’s meeting of the full Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS)—which will be held in the Loeb Drama Center in order to accommodate the record number of professors scheduled to attend—Kirby will walk through climes colder and less hospitable than University Hall.

In some ways this is fitting, because he will arrive at a meeting where the discussion promises to be significantly less comfortable than that to which Kirby is accustomed.

Today’s two principal docket items are a call for a vote of no confidence in Summers and a milder vote of censure of the president. The items come after two months of intense Faculty criticism of Summers’ leadership style, as well as his comments regarding women in science.

Today’s motions promise to impact not only the president, but the dean as well.

OPPOSING CHARGES

In addition to administrative responsibilities that include overseeing all tenure processes and the FAS budget, as well as co-chairing the Harvard College Curricular Review with Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71, Kirby also serves as the representative of the Faculty to the University at large.

And many professors say Kirby—who was appointed by Summers two-and-a-half years ago and serves as his advisor—has been put in a difficult situation by the recent Faculty tumult.

As advisor to the president, he cannot easily criticize Summers—if he were to do so openly, “the whole institution is headed to a breakdown,” according to Saltonstall Professor of History Charles S. Maier ’60.

But as the representative of the Faculty, Kirby must also be receptive to, and proactive concerning, professors’ grievances towards his boss.

A dean of the Faculty “reports to the president and does need to be loyal in a public sense, and that is, I think, a job requirement,” said William Damon, professor of education at Stanford University. “On the other hand, if that loyalty makes him lose the confidence of the Faculty, then he’s worked himself out of a job.”

“It would take a very creative person to figure out how to run both of those,” Damon added.

Kirby, who has largely remained silent regarding the Summers controversy, declined to comment for this article.

In the past, he has characterized his own leadership style as one of gauging the Faculty’s consensus and translating that into official policy.