Don't Shoot the Messenger

When hard choices are on the table, faculty pushback must be too.

In January, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra let biology professor Jeff W. Lichtman know he would cease to be Dean of Science. According to four anonymous sources, Lichtman was fired. This comes after months of conflict between Hoekstra and Lichtman regarding how to handle graduate student admissions in the Division of Science following the Trump administration’s almost $3 billion cut to Harvard’s funding.

Hoekstra originally planned to eliminate graduate admissions in the Division of Science next year. Lichtman pushed back, putting together a proposal that instead only offered 70 percent cuts to the sciences.

Though the exact circumstances behind Lichtman’s departure remain unclear, the sequence of events gives a worrying impression Harvard ought to combat: Faculty members should be free to push back against unpopular administrative decisions.

There has been no consistent public explanation of how Lichtman left the post. While four people familiar with the situation said he was fired and Lichtman himself wrote that he was “relieved” of his duties as Dean of Science, Hoekstra wrote in an email to Sciences Division faculty that the former Dean of Science had “stepped down,” without much further elaboration.

It might be that Lichtman was fired for his communication failures, or more worryingly, for voicing disagreement on the proposed Ph.D. cuts. Alleging that he “stepped down” when the evidence suggests otherwise can only chill faculty and administrators from expressing dissent.

Of course, the proposed cuts to graduate students are a biting decision to make — no choice is an easy one, with Dean Hoekstra in the unenviable position of having to make the tough call. But if the job is requiring Hoekstra to remove well-liked faculty members from the position, further clarity is due.

In general, faculty input is paramount when the administrative decision at hand could drastically alter the academic landscape. Over the past three years, Harvard has found itself ensnared in crisis upon crisis, but has yet to understand that surmounting controversial impasses requires more faculty consideration, not less.

Ideally, a faculty senate could serve such ends. But absent a dedicated deliberative body, the current mechanism for feedback can only be individual faculty, department chairs, and division deans to propagate feedback upwards through the baroque labyrinth that is the FAS.

So just as you wouldn’t want the executive branch booting your acting legislator, the FAS ought to have both the appearance and the substance of robust protections for productive discourse.

What we’ve seen from Lichtman in the cuts debate paints him as neither rebellious nor insubordinate; he was well-liked by his colleagues and acted as a voice for them through his back-and-forths with Hoekstra. And, in the end, his contests seemed to have borne results.

Following Lichtman and his team’s proposal, and, later, a confidential letter signed by 100 faculty members from across the Division of Science, Hoekstra ended up raising admissions to 50 percent.

If Lichtman was fired for voicing dissent, he was fired for doing a good job.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

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