With their trust in the administration compromised by seemingly top-down decisions all year, faculty members say it is time to reevaluate their own governance.

The fall 2012 semester was well underway on a crisp afternoon in mid-November when the elected members of the Faculty Council decided they needed to set their priorities for the year. Their regular meeting for the day had been canceled, but the group wanted to meet anyway. Leaving behind the portrait-lined chambers of University Hall and the formal structure of their bi-monthly meetings, most of the Council members convened in a modern conference room on the 15th floor of William James Hall.

They set no agenda for their informal gathering and they did not invite Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael D. Smith, who usually presides over the Council. The Council—FAS’s only elected professorial body—needed time alone, members say, to “know its own mind” and gauge how it might better channel faculty interests to the dean.

Beyond the walls of the conference room, the largest cheating case at Harvard in “living memory” was still unfolding and edX, the University’s nascent online educational platform, was growing faster than professors could reflect on it. Unbeknownst to the faculty, top administrators had just authorized secret searches of resident deans’ email accounts that would not be disclosed until the following March. And in February, administrators would abruptly announce the relocation of much of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences to Allston.

The choice not to communicate many of these decisions has struck some faculty as poor decision-making, but more importantly, they see the events of the past year as evidence of a flawed communication system.

In early May, the Council’s de facto leader, history professor Maya R. Jasanoff ’96, stood up at the final faculty meeting of the year to lead a vocal reconsideration of the way Harvard’s flagship faculty relates to its administrators.

Addressing colleagues disillusioned by an administration racing ahead without consulting the traditional bearers of its academic mission, Jasanoff expanded the conversation the Council had first broached in November.

“The common question that we all have is this,” she told her colleagues at the start of the nearly hour-long airing of concerns. “How effectively do the forums that we have available to us achieve the consultation and communication that we need?”

In a year when the balance of power has tipped decidedly toward administrators, there is broad faculty consensus on the answer: the forums available for faculty voice are not working as they should.

“This year has been the loudest wake-up call since Larry Summers that something is not quite right in the state of Denmark,” says psychology professor Howard E. Gardner ’65. “Now the question is what to do.”

A BROKEN TRUST

Even under normal circumstances, the responsibility for decision-making is not perfectly balanced between administrators and the faculty members they oversee, and to a great extent, faculty say they prefer it this way. Running a body as large and complex as FAS requires expertise and hours that full-time academics would rather devote to their scholarship and teaching.

Still, faculty expect a powerful hand in crafting the University’s broader vision. Many of the most important decisions on campus—from curriculum approval to personnel changes—require a faculty vote.

And for those that do not, faculty say they hope they can trust the administration to seriously solicit faculty input and heed faculty feedback.

“Around key policy issues, there needs to be a process of joint decision-making, or rather, joint problem-solving,” says sociology professor Christopher Winship, a member of Faculty Council. “It’s critical that faculty feel some ownership of the University and are willing to be committed University citizens.”

The problem, Winship and others say, arises when administrative execution falls out of step with the faculty-influenced vision. And as Harvard’s administration has swelled and initiatives like edX and expansion in Allston are reaching beyond FAS and even the University, a breakdown in communication between the faculty and administration is more likely, says government professor Michael E. Rosen.