Letter from Kirby Calls on Faculty To Focus on Curricular Review

Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby released a brief letter to professors yesterday in which he spoke of the “difficult circumstances” over the past five weeks that have seen both his and University President Lawrence H. Summers’ resignations, while praising the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) for having “continued its work with unflagging energy and goodwill.”

The message, which is less than 400 words in total, comes as the Faculty awaits Kirby’s annual Letter to the Faculty.

In past years, Kirby’s annual letters have been released in early February and were generally about 10,000 words, but this year’s full letter has been delayed since Kirby’s resignation on Jan. 27.

Kirby’s spokesman, Robert Mitchell, said that the dean is continuing to work on the annual letter, and the date of its release is not yet set.

In yesterday’s brief message, Kirby wrote that “it is tempting to wait for more settled times before acting” on issues like the Harvard College Curricular Review, a central focus of the dean’s four year tenure. But he said that he and the Faculty Council, the Arts and Sciences arm’s 19-member governing body, “will focus our attention fully” on the review recommendations.

Some recommendations of the curricular review, such as a proposal that concentration choice be moved from the end of freshman year to the middle of sophomore year, have been on the brink of a vote since the beginning of the semester, but legislation has yet to be presented to the full Faculty.

The recommendations were on the agenda of the Feb. 7 Faculty meeting, but the meeting was consumed by professors’ attacks on Summers’ leadership.

Another Faculty meeting, scheduled for this past Tuesday, was cancelled the day after Summers’ Feb. 21 resignation to give professors “time to settle,” according to Weary Professor of German and Comparative Literature Judith L. Ryan.

Kirby, who is in the final months of his tenure as dean, ended yesterday’s letter with a hopeful look to the future.

“The Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the University are longer-lived than any of us as individuals,” he wrote. “But the FAS and Harvard progress from one generation to the next on the strength of each individual member’s efforts. I am confident that our energies—yours and mine—will carry the Faculty across this transition, and powerfully into the future.”

—Staff writer Evan H. Jacobs can be reached at ehjacobs@fas.harvard.edu.