Harvard’s New Climate Concentration Faces Staffing Challenges After FAS Layoffs

As Harvard’s new Energy, Climate, and the Environment concentration welcomes its first official cohort of students this fall, faculty leading the interdisciplinary program say summer staff layoffs have complicated its launch, leaving professors to take on additional administrative responsibilities.

The concentration, which was approved in a 215-3 faculty vote in April, spans the Faculty of Arts and Science’s three academic divisions and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, offering four tracks that bring together approaches to climate and energy related issues across disciplines.

But faculty say the concentration’s complex structure has presented administrative challenges, exacerbated by sweeping FAS staff layoffs over the summer that eliminated 165 positions.

Jason Beckfield, a sociology professor who chairs the Markets, Politics, and Societies track, said the layoffs have made it difficult to coordinate advising, cross-list courses, advertise curriculum, and support students declaring the concentration.

“I think the staff layoffs over the summer were a very large challenge for us, among others,” Beckfield said. “I think that really slowed us down over the summer and in the early fall, getting the tracks set up and getting the websites set up and all of that work that’s necessary for launching a concentration.”

Joyce E. Chaplin, a history professor who serves as a co-director of undergraduate studies for the Nature, Ethics, and the Human Imagination track in the FAS Arts and Humanities Division, said the layoffs also complicated efforts to secure dedicated administrative support.

“The timing of the layoffs was very bad in terms of our being able to recruit a staff member or move somebody over laterally,” Chaplin said.

The cuts were particularly severe in the Social Sciences Division, which houses Beckfield’s track. According to FAS disclosures, 30 percent of staff positions covered by the restructuring in the division were eliminated.

Concerns about the program’s administrative capacity predate the layoffs. When the concentration was first approved, some faculty expressed concerns about a lack of funding commitment and difficulties with inter-department coordination.

Beckfield said EnCE faculty “repeatedly raised the concern about needing pretty significant support at the launch of this concentration to make it everything that it can be.”

“Let’s just say I think we have a lot of work to do,” he added.

An FAS spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Despite the staffing challenges, faculty say their commitment to the concentration has helped sustain its launch.

“I think the faculty involved understand that you know now is a very difficult time— probably an impossible time— to be asking for additional staff support, and so as the concentration launches, I think people are very committed to this, and willing to work longer hours,” Beckfield said.

Lene V. Hau, a professor of physics and applied physics who chairs the concentration’s SEAS-hosted Science and Engineering for Sustainable Solutions track, said the “enthusiasm and energy and ideas and creativity” from EnCE faculty reflects a “startup spirit.”

“In a startup, you work hard, you do whatever it takes to get this off the ground. And I think there’s this spirit of collaboration,” Hau said.

Each of EnCE’s four tracks is overseen by a faculty committee currently led by one to two faculty members. Two faculty members from each track serve on the concentration-wide Standing Committee, which meets with administrative deans across SEAS and FAS to ensure cohesive coordination of the concentration.

Hau said the concentration’s “grassroots” governance structure has also meant tenured faculty are unusually involved in student advising and decisions about curriculum and program structure.

Noel “Missy” Holbrook, a professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology who chairs the Climate and Biodiversity track, said faculty in her track have focused on developing a curriculum that includes foundational courses centered around key topics.

“We have a lot of courses that touch on biodiversity— lots in OEB— but we don’t have a course that is a little bit more tailored to this concentration that combines biodiversity science and climate science,” Holbrook said. “So we’re discussing how to do that.”

Holbrook said that strengthening faculty “breadth and depth” in climate and energy will be “incredibly important for the students and for the program and for the world.” She, Beckfield, Hau, and Kelsey all said they hope Harvard will prioritize future hiring with an eye towards climate and environment-related research. Despite the University-wide hiring freeze, the FAS announced the launch of 25 tenure-track faculty searches last month.

“Within many social science fields, at least, climate is a very exciting new area of research. There should be a good case to be made in a number of different departments,” Beckfield said. “Everything in the Social Sciences Division.”

Robin Kelsey, who served as dean of the FAS Arts and Humanities Division from 2016 to 2024, currently chairs the EnCE Standing Committee and serves as a co-DUS for the NEHI track, said Harvard should make research on climate and environment a greater priority as it looks toward future hiring.

“I think many of our disciplines were formed at an earlier moment in history when these issues were not so central. So I think it would be a very good thing if we hired more faculty with this specialization,” Kelsey said.

Beckfield and Kelsey said that SEAS and the Salata Institute have offered informal support for administrative tasks after the FAS layoffs. Beckfield also noted that SEAS has been more “successful” than the other three FAS divisions at making climate-related appointments.

Hau said SEAS Dean David Parkes has worked “very closely” with her on the concentration’s SEAS-affiliated track, and has been receptive to conversations about funding and hiring. At the beginning of his tenure, Parkes completed a climate-related cluster hire that began under his predecessor, Frank Doyle. Last month, SEAS launched a search for a tenure track Environmental Science and Engineering professor who specializes in water technology. The posting explicitly advertises a teaching and advisory role in EnCE. According to Hau, the school has recently hired an assistant professor who works on battery research, a field that also supports EnCE.

In the FAS Sciences division, however, Holbrook said uncertainty about federal research funding could complicate hiring decisions.

“We’re going through a really difficult time in terms of seeing how science funding from the federal level will roll out in the future. I think that’s a big uncertainty when you talk about hiring people who do empirical work who need labs and a lot of equipment,” Holbrook said.

Despite the administrative and financial uncertainty surrounding its launch, Kelsey said that concentration’s complex interdisciplinarity remains its greatest strength.

“I haven’t known another concentration that so methodically understands itself as preparing students to sit around a table with colleagues in other disciplines to work together on the problems we face,” Kelsey said.

—Staff writer Stephanie Dragoi can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at sd3.28.