Nathan J. Heard, a second-year doctoral student in the Department for Population and International Health and a Spiegelman Fellow at the center, said that students who study and do research through the center were not consulted on the changes.

“Students are, at best, an afterthought in this process.”

Reich said that he was told of the decision to merge the center and appoint a new director this past September in a meeting with Hyman. Reich said that although Hyman accepted his resignation at the time, Hyman called him back the next day and asked him to stay on as director until details could be worked out. Reich agreed.

But Reich added that one of the conditions of his resignation was that he be allowed to read any public announcement before its release, something that he says he was not given the chance to do.

“I was surprised by the [April 29] letter from the Provost which was broadly circulated to HSPH faculty and students because I thought we had an agreement that I could review the content before circulation because of its sensitive nature,” Reich said.

The decision to fold the center into HIGH and appoint a new director was undertaken jointly by Hyman and SPH Dean Barry R. Bloom on recommendations from an external committee that reviewed the center’s mission last spring, according to a statement from University science spokesman B.D. Colen.

The review committee’s internal report, obtained by The Crimson, recommended that “over time, the center needs to connect to the university global health initiative in a concrete way.”

At issue is the meaning of the word “concrete,” Reich said.

“My understanding of the report and the views of the committee is that there was no such recommendation to place the center under the Global Health Initiative umbrella,” he said.

The center has always been a University-wide research hub, although its endowment is based at SPH.

Members of the external review committee declined to comment for this article.

“After the review report came out in March 2004, I contacted the Provost three times by e-mail asking for an appointment and received no response or acknowledgment,” Reich said last week. “My only contact with him was in September 2004, when he informed me that a decision had been made to merge the center with Harvard’s Global Health Initiative.”

Hyman declined to comment, referring questions to Colen.

—Staff writer May Habib can be reached at habib@fas.harvard.edu.