PULLING THE PURSE STRINGS

During the meeting’s question period, Music Department Chair Ingrid Monson challenged FAS’s budgetary priorities and Kirby’s decision to decrease faculty hiring this year.

Monson said her department has recently been forced to postpone a faculty search due to financial cuts and asked Summers if faculty hiring is taking a backseat to Allston planning and new student life initiatives.

Last week, the College announced that the Office of the President will provide millions of dollars for new student spaces, including a pub in Loker Commons and a cafe in Lamont Library.

“It is difficult to escape the impression that perhaps some departments are being squeezed to save money for Allston,” Monson said.

Kirby responded that the undergraduate services were “overdue” and that the funding for those services is separate from the hiring budget. He also stressed that Faculty hiring has been one of FAS’s highest priorities over the past few years, as indicated by its recent growth rate.

Hammonds’ plans to implement the task force’s recommendations were well received by most of the Faculty, though Mansfield and Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Comparative Literature Ruth R. Wisse expressed their disappointment with what they called affirmative action-style policies designed to achieve “numerical parity.”

Dean of the Graduate School Theda Skocpol concluded the meeting by presenting her plan for a Graduate Policy Committee (GPC), which she called the Graduate School’s version of the College’s Educational Policy Committee.

She said the GPC will “review graduate programs run by departments, interdisciplinary programs, and interfaculty committees.”

—Staff writer William C. Marra can be reached at wmarra@fas.harvard.edu.

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