Dozens of College Staff Laid Off as FAS Restructuring Continues

Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences directly laid off roughly 13 percent of College staff covered by last week’s restructuring in its largest wave of job changes yet, according to a document obtained by The Crimson.

Administrators informed 36 employees in Thursday meetings that they would be laid off and offered at least another 28 a choice between a changed role and a layoff, according to a list of staff positions provided to some employees to comply with age-discrimination law.

The document, which also included information about four previous rounds of job changes, showed that at least 83 positions have been affected so far as part of the FAS’ staff restructuring. Forty-eight positions were selected for termination or marked as impacted, while at least another 35 employees were offered a choice between a changed role and a layoff.

The disclosures track decisions about employees’ existing positions, not their ultimate employment status. Some employees whose positions were affected may have since been hired into new roles.

FAS spokesperson James M. Chisholm wrote in a statement that the school would wait to release data on the layoffs until the end of the process, citing “legal and labor obligations.”

“The Crimson’s figures do not necessarily reflect the most up-to-date information,” he added.

The most recent disclosure also contains several apparent inconsistencies that prevent a definitive count. One asterisked position is marked in both the “selected” and “not selected” columns, while three other positions are marked in neither. The Crimson counted only entries with an unambiguous status, putting the minimum number affected last week at 64. The unclear asterisked entry could raise the total to 65.

The Crimson’s data is drawn directly from Harvard disclosures mandated by the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act, which requires employers to provide some affected workers with a list of ages and job titles of employees in the relevant group who were and were not selected for termination.

The disclosures show the restructuring has unfolded in five phases thus far. Three limited rounds in May and June affected senior leaders, a July 14 round affected lead administrators in the FAS’ three academic divisions, and Thursday’s round broadly reached staff across Harvard College.

This week’s job changes were the first to broadly affect rank-and-file College staff. But the disclosures showed that two senior College administrators — Nekesa C. Straker, then the senior assistant dean of residential life and first-year students, and Mike Burke, dean of student services — had positions marked as impacted roughly a month earlier.

Burke — who has worked at Harvard for roughly 26 years and heads the now-dismantled Office of Student Services — confirmed he would be leaving Harvard and thanked staff for their “enthusiastic embrace” of the office’s goals in a July 21 message to OSS staff obtained by The Crimson. He declined to comment on his layoff.

Straker has since been recruited to work in the newly created Freshman Dean’s Office, according to a July 17 email from College Dean David J. Deming to affiliates. The age discrimination disclosures do not indicate whether staff are later hired into new positions.

This week also saw the departure of two high-profile administrators in the College’s writing programs.

Longtime Harvard College Writing Center director Jane Rosenzweig announced her layoff in a Thursday email to Writing Center tutors obtained by The Crimson, adding that tutors would have the opportunity to work at the Academic Resource Center instead.

The College also laid off Harvard Writing Project director James Herron, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Rosenzweig declined to comment on her layoff, and Herron did not respond to a request for comment on his layoff.

Some offices were more strongly impacted than others. Phillips Brooks House saw the greatest concentration of layoffs or layoff options, with 10 of the 23 in-scope employees affected.

The FAS’ first broad wave of layoffs came last week and affected department administrators and center executive directors in the school’s three academic divisions. The age-discrimination document showed seven total administrator layoffs from July 14, with another seven administrators given the option between a new position and a layoff. There were 65 roles listed in total for that phase of the restructuring.

This week’s process looked similar: Staff received emails from FAS Chief Human Resources Officer Nicole Breen Wednesday informing them of Zoom meetings Thursday to go over job changes.

Once the meetings were over, Deming sent an announcement to affiliates.

“These were incredibly difficult decisions. Every member of our community has made valuable contributions and moved the work of the College forward, and we are deeply grateful for their service,” he wrote, adding that postings for new College positions would soon go up.

Affected employees were told to work remotely Thursday. But Thomas Oppong, a marketing, branding, and communications coordinator at the Mignone Center of Career Success who was on parental leave to take care of his two-month-old baby, happened to be on campus for a doctor’s appointment — and took the call from his doctor’s office with his wife and three kids right beside him.

Manny Contomanolis, the associate dean for academic engagement in the Office of Undergraduate Education, then gently informed him that he would be laid off, Oppong said.

“I jumped off the call and I had my wife standing right there, giving me hugs and my kids around me,” he said.

Oppong is now looking at jobs elsewhere — potentially out of state or even abroad.

“I’m now looking everywhere like a rat, like, ‘okay, where can I be? Who wants me? Who will take me?’ I’m just trying to find opportunities obviously because I have dependents,” he said.

Decisions will continue to roll out in the next few weeks.

FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra and FAS Dean of Administration and Finance Warren Petrofsky wrote in a Wednesday message that they would send out more information on upcoming layoffs soon.

“We will write again to the FAS community as we move to the next wave of notifications, and at that time we will share more information about which units will be affected,” they wrote.

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