Faust Chooses Veteran Professor To Lead Medical School

Jeffrey S. Flier, a 29-year veteran of Harvard and the chief academic officer of one of Harvard’s affiliated hospitals, will take over on Sept. 1 as the permanent dean of Harvard Medical School, University President Drew G. Faust announced Wednesday.

The appointment of Flier, an expert on obesity and diabetes at Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, comes after a nine-month search to succeed Joseph B. Martin, who served as dean for a decade.

The search seemed to be nearing an end in late May, when Elizabeth G. Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and reportedly a top candidate for the Medical School deanship, traveled to Cambridge for a series of search-related meetings. But several weeks after Nabel's under-the-radar visit, Faust named Barbara J. McNeil, a professor of health care policy, to lead the school on a temporary basis while Faust rushed to find a permanent leader.

In an interview Wednesday, Flier said that his top priority as dean is to continue to oversee the implementation of the Medical School’s new curriculum, which was drafted under Martin. Flier also said that he will make many decisions on the Allston expansion and the future of biological research, and that he would like to “accelerate the integration of fundamental science and social science” with medicine.

Flier was a founding member of the Harvard University Science and Engineering Committee (HUSEC), a task force led by Provost Steven E. Hyman that is focused on improving University-wide science initiatives. Faust has already emphasized her desire to bring Harvard's 10 schools closer together through University-wide initiatives like the science planning led by HUSEC.

As the Medical School faces tight federal research budgets, Flier will have to seek out new methods of funding for the school's projects. He said that part of his job as dean is to raise funds for both research and the expansion of financial aid to medical students, a priority Faust said she shared. Flier added that Harvard's efforts to award scholarships “appear to be insufficient.”

In response to a question about whether the dean should try to influence medical education and health care policy nationally—as has been suggested by some faculty members—Flier said that there is “no reason that the dean of the Harvard Medical School should not have a major voice in medical education nationally,” particularly in light of the curricular review. He added that he is “personally very interested in the state of health care,” but that “it is a very complicated issue” and he is not wedded to “a single answer.”

Flier is the second permanent dean Faust has named since being named Harvard's 28th president in February. In June, Faust tapped computer scientist Michael D. Smith to lead the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She has also appointed a number of interim leaders to fill the many administrative vacancies across the University.

The dean of the Medical School oversees 11,000 faculty members and 18 affiliated institutions, which together received more than $1 billion in federal research funds last year.

Given the size and often unwieldy nature of the Medical School, Faust said in the interview Wednesday that, though she did not insist on an insider, she is “very happy to have a person with deep and intimate knowledge of the Medical School.”

“We are blessed as community to have someone of such ability already here at Harvard,” she said.

—Staff writer Paras D. Bhayani can be reached at pbhayani@fas.harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Claire M. Guehenno can be reached at guehenno@fas.harvard.edu.