FAS Could Lay Off 25 Percent of Staff in Summer Administrative Restructuring

Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences could lay off up to one quarter of its staff this summer as part of a sweeping administrative overhaul that would consolidate departments, centers, and institutes into shared administrative “clusters,” according to two people familiar with the plans.

The proposed structure, developed by the FAS Task Force on Workforce Planning with support from McKinsey & Company, would likely replace many unit-level administrative roles with staff who serve multiple academic units, according to an internal slide deck obtained by The Crimson.

The overhaul is intended to help close FAS’s projected $365 million budget deficit. But it would also mark one of the school’s most significant staff reorganizations in years, with layoffs likely to strongly impact department administrators — staff members who manage finances, human resources, and personnel matters for individual FAS units.

Under the proposed plan, individual department administrators could be replaced by “cluster” department administrators who support several departments, centers, or institutes alongside shared finance and human resources staffers, according to the deck, which was presented to department administrators earlier this month.

It remains unclear which positions would be eliminated, reassigned, or newly created.

The plan caps nearly a year of discussions over the FAS’ administrative structure. The task force outlined a broad “federated” administrative model to staff in December, but the potential scale of the staff reductions — and the shape of the new clusters — has only recently come into focus.

FAS administrators and members of the task force have introduced the clustering plan in meetings with department chairs and administrators in recent weeks, though the final groupings remain in flux.

The clusters are intended to group units with “intellectual alignment” and “shared technical needs,” according to a pre-read slide deck sent to department chairs before they met with members of the task force.

Proposed groupings included Theater, Dance, & Media with English; Ethnicity, Migration, Rights, with Folklore & Mythology, History & Literature, and Medieval Studies; and Celtic Languages & Literatures with Classics and Linguistics, according to several people familiar with the situation.

Some units, including Philosophy, were expected to remain in standalone clusters, according to two people familiar.

Across FAS’s divisions, departments have also been grouped with research centers. At one point, a potential cluster included the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Center for Brain Science, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

According to the pre-read deck, clusters would be led by cluster department administrators and center executive directors, supported by administrative coordinators and faculty assistants. The clusters will also retain graduate and undergraduate program coordinators, as well as specialists for certain programs, including the African Language Program.

Ahead of the proposed layoffs, Harvard Chief of Staff to the Dean for Administration and Finance Katherine Gates asked administrators to share the payroll protocols of each department to allow for the continuation of payments after the restructuring, according to an email obtained by The Crimson.

The proposed reductions in FAS staff positions would follow similar cuts at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, which laid off roughly 15 percent of its staff in October.

But many FAS department administrators are not represented by a union, leaving them with few formal protections if their positions are eliminated. Several have worked at Harvard for decades.

FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra addressed concerns over restructuring discussions in a May 14 email to staff.

“I know that recent public discussion has left some of you feeling that your work has been disregarded, diminished, or misunderstood,” she wrote. “I regret that.”

Hoektra then forwarded the message to faculty, separately acknowledging the uncertainty and anxiety surrounding the workforce changes.

“I ask for your partnership in supporting our staff colleagues during this time,” she added. “I know we share a deep commitment to treating them with care and respect, and our actions now should reflect that commitment.”

—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.