Faculty Group Pushes Top Administrators To Reform Faculty Investigations

A group of faculty members is pressing Harvard’s top brass to overhaul how it investigates professors, raising concerns that current procedures lack basic safeguards and could expose faculty to unfair or overly opaque disciplinary processes.

The effort, led by a working group within the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, has gained momentum in recent months as faculty examine investigations that have unfolded across the University.

At the center of the push is a call for clearer and more consistent standards of due process — including greater transparency for accused professors and more uniform procedures across Harvard’s schools.

“We are concerned that some investigations have failed to adhere to reasonable standards of due process and that this threatens academic freedom,” University Professor Eric S. Maskin, a co-president of CAFH, wrote in a statement.

A Harvard spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

The working group spent the last year gathering information about past cases, speaking with top Harvard administrators and faculty members who have been investigated, according to a person familiar with the group. Those conversations have accelerated this spring, though the group’s work remains in an early, exploratory phase.

“We’re just beginning to talk to people, gather information, and we’ll then go forward to having discussions depending on what we find,” said Jeffrey S. Flier, another co-president.

The effort is primarily concerned that professors under investigation are given limited information about the allegations against them, placed under gag orders, and rendered unable to hire lawyers while investigations are ongoing, according to another person.

The group also hopes to standardize disciplinary processes across schools. Harvard Kennedy School professor Tarek Masoud, a CAFH co-president, said the group has put forward the investigative process at the Law School as “a good model that’s worth other parts of the University learning from and potentially emulating.”

“I think the goal is to ensure that there is sufficient due process in any investigation procedure, so that you ensure that it cannot be abused, as we sometimes read, it’s been abused at other universities,” Masoud added.

The push for reform follows several widely scrutinized investigations in recent years, including inquiries tied to faculty connections with the disgraced financier Jeffrey E. Epstein.

Last fall, the University launched a probe into former University President Lawrence H. Summers, just months before his dramatic resignation. And mathematics professor Martin Nowak was placed on paid administrative leave by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ Faculty Conduct Committee pending a formal investigation. (The FCC is a two-year pilot committee that reviews professional conduct concerns that do not fall under Non-Discrimination and Anti-Bullying procedures).

The University has also conducted several less public — but also scrutinized — internal investigations into Harvard faculty in recent years, including Anthropology professor John L. Comaroff, Economics professor Roland G. Fryer, Jr., Geology professor Daniel P. Schrag, and HKS Lecturer Marshall L. Ganz ’64.

Since CAFH’s founding in spring 2023, it has worked to exert its influence to reform University policy. Several of its members assisted in shaping the University’s institutional voice policy, which curtails when Harvard and its top administrators can take stances on controversial public policy issues.

And in April 2024, CAFH pushed for Harvard’s FAS to eliminate diversity statements in job applications. The FAS removed the requirement later that year.

The group remained comparably quiet through 2025, despite other prominent faculty responses to unprecedented political turmoil. But it recently hired a new director, Jason Nemirow, to steer CAFH programming.

“It is not a formal Harvard process,” Flier said. “It is a process of a group of faculty who are beginning to look into the question.”

—Staff writer Hugo C. Chiasson can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at hcc.35. Follow him on X @hugochiassonn.

—Staff writer Abigail S. Gerstein can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at abbysg.97. Follow her on X @abbysgerstein.

—Staff writer Amann S. Mahajan can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at amannsm.38. Follow her on X @amannmahajan.

—Staff writer Elise A. Spenner can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at elisespenner.82. Follow her on X @elisespenner.