Government Professor Taeku Lee, Education Specialist Shirley Lee Named Next Dunster Faculty Deans

Government professor Taeku Lee and education researcher Shirley Lee will serve as the next faculty deans of Dunster House, Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana announced in an email to Dunster affiliates Wednesday afternoon.

Taeku Lee is a scholar in racial and ethnic politics and was the first ethnic studies scholar to be brought on by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in a 2022 cluster hire. He currently serves as president of the American Political Science Association.

After earning a masters in public policy from Harvard Kennedy School, Lee taught at HKS between 1997 and 2002. He then taught at U.C. Berkeley before returning to Harvard.

Shirley Lee, a specialist in K-12 education, came to Cambridge after working as an education researcher at the U.C. Berkeley.

“I have been struck by Taeku’s and Shirley’s warmth and genuine commitment to building an inclusive community,” Khurana wrote.

Current Dunster House Faculty Deans Cheryl Chen and Sean D. Kelly announced their decision to step down from the position at the end of the academic year in an August 2024 email to Dunster affiliates. Kelly became dean of the Arts and Humanities division on July 1.

Kelly and Chen were the Dunster House faculty deans for eight years.

“I want to thank departing Faculty Deans Cheryl Chen and Sean Kelly for their extraordinary commitment to our students and community over the past several years,” Khurana wrote in his Wednesday email. “Their unwavering devotion to making every student and staff member feel at home is remarkable. I will miss working with them.”

Taeku and Shirley Lee will become Dunster’s faculty deans on July 1.

—Staff writer Samuel A. Church can be reached at samuel.church@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @samuelachurch.

—Staff writer Cam N. Srivastava can be reached at cam.srivastava@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @camsrivastava.