“The hope is that Harvard is able to identify the best junior faculty and really provide them with the resources, environment, and mentorship needed to make them incredibly successful and ultimately senior faculty,” says Natural Sciences Professor Hopi E. Hoekstra.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION?

Another area that has fallen under consideration as the University examines the future of its faculty is racial diversity.

Even before FAS’ finances fully stabilize, Lamont says that she has committed herself to increasing diversity within the faculty by expanding the pool of candidates considered for each new appointment.

Traditionally, the University has not placed enough emphasis on seeking out diversity—in categories like gender and ethnicity—in candidates for faculty positions, according to Lamont. Consequently, she adds, the list of contenders for the professoriate have tended toward homogeny.

But a simply homogenous group of individuals does not reflect the best talent—a concept that is seen in Ph.D. classes that “look like the United Nations,” Lamont says.

“If we don’t look broadly and diversely, we are missing the best of the next generation,” she says.

But it remains unclear to what degree FAS will diversify its candidate pool in pursuit of creating the “new faculty.”

According to Dowling, FAS has implemented an unstated policy that resembles affirmative action.

“I think there certainly is affirmative action going on in terms of faculty appointments,” he says. “We certainly encourage departments to seek widely and seek a diverse faculty. There’s no question about this.”

But Mansfield—who writes about the merits of executive authority and has already voiced concerns about Harvard’s liberal tendencies—says that he does not see the need for any form of affirmative action when it comes to the selection of faculty members.

“I don’t think that there is any prejudice against having blacks on our faculty or against having women, so now I think to renew the campaign for diversity is like kicking an open door,” says Mansfield, who decided not to take the faculty retirement package.

“I think they’ve gone far enough on diversity,” he adds. “It is unnecessary and superfluous and could be harmful because any time that you pick a goal other than excellence you subtract from excellence. You distract yourself from keeping the best faculty in the world.”

NOT GLORIFIED POST-DOCS

Hoekstra exemplifies the “new Harvard.” Raised within Harvard’s tenure-track system after arriving from the University of California, Santa Barbara, 37-year-old Hoekstra was promoted to the senior faculty this year.