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Updated June 18, 2025, at 10:27 p.m.
Harvard Dean of Social Science Lawrence D. Bobo will step down from his position and take a sabbatical for the 2025-26 academic year, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra wrote in an email to faculty last week.
Economics professor David M. Cutler ’87 — who was appointed interim dean until July 1 after Bobo took an unexpected leave of absence for the spring 2025 semester — will continue serving as interim dean for the division for the next two academic years.
Hoekstra wrote that Bobo, a Sociology and African and African American Studies professor, was stepping down “to focus on pressing family matters.” When she announced Bobo’s leave of absence in November, Hoekstra similarly cited “unanticipated personal matters.”
“I am deeply grateful to Larry for his more than six years of outstanding leadership,” she wrote in the email. “I have personally appreciated Larry’s thoughtful counsel and unwavering dedication to our teaching and research mission.”
Bobo wrote in a statement to The Crimson that he felt “privileged” to serve as the division’s dean, expressing gratitude for the well wishes he has received since Hoekstra’s announcement and calling the opportunity to work with his colleagues, staff, and students “a delight.”
“Stepping aside was not an easy path for me to take,” Bobo wrote. “But I conclude these years of service with a sense of honor and pride having striven to ensure that the social sciences thrived and excelled here at Harvard.”
Cutler did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday afternoon. A Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesperson also did not immediately respond.
Hoekstra will launch a search for Bobo’s permanent successor in the fall of 2026.
“The transition comes at a moment of significant challenge for the FAS,” Hoekstra wrote in her email. The school has taken steps to tighten its purse strings amid the Trump administration’s attacks on Harvard’s funding.
Hoekstra instructed professors in May to prepare contingency plans for budget shortfalls. The FAS also plans to keep spending flat for fiscal year 2026 and halt “non-essential capital projects and spending.”
In his semester in the interim deanship, Cutler has often found himself as the messenger for both difficult prospects and controversial changes. He asked faculty in the Social Science division to draw up plans for handling a 20 percent budget shortfall, and he announced the decision to push out the faculty leaders of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies in March.
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Cutler, who served as the divisional dean from 2003 to 2008, studies health economics and holds appointments at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard School of Public Health. He has extensive experience working in government, including helping design the Affordable Care Act and advising former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama on health policy.
He was also a protege of economist and former Harvard president Lawrence H. Summers.
Hoekstra expressed gratitude for Cutler’s decision to stay on as the divisional dean, lauding him for bringing “deep institutional knowledge, proven leadership, and a longstanding commitment to the social sciences and to the broader FAS community.”
In addition to serving as interim dean, Cutler sat on a committee reviewing the FAS’ tenure process alongside Hoekstra in 2021, two years before she became the school’s dean. He has also served as the co-chair of Harvard College’s Committee on General Education and, in 2013, as a third-party fact-finder in negotiations between the University and the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers.
During his tenure, Bobo drew fierce criticism from some of his colleagues for writing an op-ed that suggested certain faculty speech should have “sanctionable limits.” His critics argued that his proposals would restrict academic freedom.
Bobo was also an opponent of the push to form a faculty senate, penning an op-ed and speaking up in FAS meetings to argue that the Harvard Corporation — the University’s highest governing body — should instead set aside a faculty seat.
—Staff writer William C. Mao can be reached at william.mao@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @williamcmao.
—Staff writer Veronica H. Paulus can be reached at veronica.paulus@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @VeronicaHPaulus.
