Go Gently into that Good Night?
Posted on December 2nd, 2009 in Uncategorized |
Another Harvard bombshell: Harvard Mag reports that several of the university’s schools, “led by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences,” are encouraging professors to take voluntary retirement packages.
As FAS faculty members learned today in e-mails from their dean, Michael D. Smith, the incentive is offered to tenured professors who will be at least 65 years old by next September 1, and who will have completed at least 10 years of service by their retirement date. Qualifying faculty members who choose to retire under the program must elect by next June 30 to do so under various schedules…
Voluntary retirement offers, of course, preceded layoffs of Harvard staff. Will the same hold true for faculty?
67 Responses
12/2/2009 7:12 pm
This is very interesting indeed… and your question Richard is very perceptive, especially since this program was unveiled in three of the poorer schools (Public Health, Education and Divinity). Clearly this is a signal of desperation over the financial situation. How many staff were laid off in those schools? What will be next?
“At the same time, four of Harvard’s graduate and professional schools — Harvard Medical School, the Harvard School of Public Health, the Harvard Divinity School and the Harvard Graduate School of Education — unveiled similar plans to eligible members of their faculties, officials said
12/2/2009 8:04 pm
Golden parachutes for faculty who were past retirement age anyway? What is this? Another example of faculty taking care of themselves at the University’s expense? What is the average cost of these golden parachutes and are they really necessary?
12/2/2009 8:28 pm
This article describing the program is a perfect example of what Sam Spektor would call spend now and pay later.
http://harvardmagazine.com/breaking-news/harvard-faculties-encourage-professor-retirements
FAS is trying to reduce the size of the faculty by approximately the same number that it grew under Larry Summers. Of course, those that would retire were not appointed under Summers. His actions essentially accelerated a normal process of replacement of faculty as they retired, giving Summers authority, over a compressed period of time, to in five years shape the Harvard faculty for the next 30 years.
To ‘decompress’ the imbalances caused by his actions, Harvard now must now dole out about 36 million dollars to faculty over 65. Among them some would be at their peak of their productivity, and therefore this incentive would deprive the students of some of the finest and wisest minds among the faculty. Some of them might have been ready to retire anyway, making the extra fifth of a million gift perfunctory. And none of this would have any impact, except a potential expenditure of 34 million this year, in the short run.
Larry… Larry… the shade of your actions will loom large in Harvard Yard for decades to come. In the words of the bard you tried to barr from speaking at that anniversary:
‘A spirit moves… John Harvard walks the Yard’
12/2/2009 8:49 pm
“Will the same hold true for faculty?”
Uhm… tenure?
12/2/2009 9:07 pm
Well, for those who are outraged by how much $ this will cost, I have a cheering thught: the incentive is not big enough to lure many of the eligibles into retirement. Their retirement accounts have declined too much, and they like theor jobs too much.
12/2/2009 9:30 pm
Harry’s right — not much carrot, and certainly no stick. Why ever give up being a tenured professor?
12/2/2009 9:30 pm
Actually, it’s not just the “poorer” schools that are included — the B-school has had such a program for a while and it shows: they have the youngest faculty of the bunch because of a relatively well thought out plan (which is quite similar to the one proposed for FAS and the other schools.)
Frankly, there are a number of faculty in FAS who should retire (as in they are no longer doing much beyond teaching a course) but have no reason to do so thanks to the Supreme Court. And if they don’t retire, then there will be no openings for junior faculty.
Anyway, I find it quite implausible that there will be any faculty layoffs. The bulk of the (expensive) faculty are tenured. To lay them off requires dissolving a department AFAIK — at least in other institutions, tenure is within a department, so dissolving the department is the only way to dump tenured faculty.
Finally, I’m not sure why you think this is a bombshell. The real question is why did it take so long for this to come out? My guess is that it’s incredibly tricky to draft such a buyout without raising the specter of age discrimination.
12/2/2009 9:53 pm
what happened to giving faculty a shared office in the basement next to the bathroom vent, without windows… much cheaper than a quarter million bucks.
12/2/2009 9:57 pm
to anon 9.30pm. You obviously don’t work at the B school. The reason we retire earlier is because we can consult for our former students at very high fees. The freedom to do this without having to teach, and a generous Harvard pension, are the reason few stick around longer than necessary.
My guess is that the proportion of faculty past 65 in various schools is inversely related to the average consulting rates for retired faculty in those fields.
12/2/2009 10:02 pm
what a sad thought, that some people may hang on just because they have nothing better to do…
12/2/2009 10:16 pm
Is this the reason Jay Light retired?
12/3/2009 6:26 am
Actually I’d like to retract my dismissive comment above, which I posted after only a glance at the news on my cell phone. Having now read it in full, I see the plan has more options than I realized in my haste. The 2- and 4-year options may well be attractive to eligible senior faculty. (RB, layoffs of tenured faculty are not an option, and that is what makes a plan like this hard to fashion.)
12/3/2009 8:03 am
Would love it if Harry or another could clarify something for me—a point about tenure. While I’d always known that tenure prevented a professor from being fired for speech, I’d never realized that tenure prevented a professor from being fired for cost. Is tenure truly a lifetime guarantee of employment? And are there no circumstances in which a university can lay off a professor because of budgetary imperatives?
12/3/2009 8:27 am
If you read the recent diversity report, I think you will see more of the reason behind this than worrying about upcoming “faculty layoffs” (a nonexistent thing). Senior tenured faculty are by and large old white men while pipeline faculty are much more diverse and much more female. Whether or not you see this as a good move or bad move, depends where you are in that spectrum. I think if you look at many, many of the Ivies and other top schools, programs like this have existed for a long time. Harvard, as usual, is late to the table.
12/3/2009 9:15 am
(I am not a lawyer.) Bennington got rid of tenure for everyone, and got rid of many faculty in the process. So that is possible. What I think would be pretty hard to do is to selectively pick out a few people and strip them of tenure and fire them “for cost” and try to claim it had nothing to do with performance, or age, etc., while leaving other tenured faculty just as they were. Seems to me that would invite challenges as a matter of contract law, discrimination law, etc.
12/3/2009 9:18 am
And by the way, “lay off” is a euphemism. Correctly used, that term refers to laborers suffering a loss of employment that can reasonably expected to be temporary, reversed when a suspended project resumes. Everything that is going on these days is a termination, not a layoff.
12/3/2009 9:37 am
Richard, that’s one of your best headlines to date.
As to tenure, of COURSE it protects people from being fired “for cost,” just as it protects people from being fired so that they can “spend more time with their families.” This is because universities, like any other institution, are more than capable of lying.
12/3/2009 9:41 am
Gross moral turpitude is the only basis, as far as I am aware.
12/3/2009 10:02 am
I believe dereliction of duty is another basis.
Also, courts have held that tenured faculty may be fired if the institution is facing a “financial emergency”, but I believe the criteria for that are rather stringent. (Harvard is nowhere near such a state.)
12/3/2009 10:55 am
I’m nto sure why this is a bombshell, either. Many universities have put in place since 1994 (the year that the higher education exemption from the Age Discrimination in Employment Act ended) either cash incentives for retirement at certain ages or phased retirement plans, or both. In general they haven’t really fundamentally altered the retirement dynamic in arts and sciences faculties: tenured scientists stay on the longest because they have low teaching loads and need their laboratories to remain research-active; humanists retire earliest on average because they have the highest teaching loads and generally have access to most of what they need to remain active scholars post-retirement; and social scientists are somewhere in the middle.
Also, it should be pointed out that FAS embarked on an expansion in its faculty ranks several years (at least) before Larry Summers arrived.
12/3/2009 11:18 am
Here is the language, from the Third Statute (very hard to find online):
Professors and associate professors are appointed without express limitation
of time unless otherwise specified. All other officers are appointed for a
specified term, or for terms of unspecified duration subject to the right of
the university to fix at any time the term of such appointment.
All officers who hold teaching appointments, as defined from time to time
by the Corporation with the consent of the overseers, are subject to removal
from such appointments by the Corporation only for grave misconduct or
neglect of duty. Officers who hold professional or administrative
appointments are subject to removal from such appointments by the
Corporation for grave misconduct or whenever, in its opinion, their duties
are not satisfactorily discharged.
12/3/2009 11:27 am
Which grave misconduct does not include stealing horse manure or even being found liable for conspiring to defraud the US government . . . But some of us old-timers know of a couple of instances at Harvard in the last 25 years or so.
12/3/2009 12:46 pm
The AAUP includes program discontinuation or financial exigency among the grounds upon which a tenured appointment may be terminated. See: http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/protect/legal/topics/tenure-perspectives.htm
12/3/2009 1:07 pm
To Anon 8.27am, who said “I think if you look at many, many of the Ivies and other top schools, programs like this have existed for a long time. Harvard, as usual, is late to the table.”
Your logic does not hold water. Harvard is different in many ways from other Universities.
* Other Universities do not fire first their librarians and staff members when they have financial troubles.
* They do not cut programs to the point all is left are managers to run the programs, but no funds for the programs themselves
* They do not cut hot meals for students.
* They do provide various forms of serious support for childcare for junior faculty
* They provide support for college tuition for children of faculty
Harvard does not do these things. Why should it then allocate, at the worst financial crisis in its history, 32 million to give a bonus to faculty who were going to retire anyway? Why does someone who was planning on retirement need a bonus of almost a quarter million dollars? How many of those laid off could have kept they jobs with these funds?
And if the program in fact succeeds at encouraging faculty who were not planning on retiring to do this, what impact does a reduction in the size of the faculty have on teaching and research, the central missions of the University? What do those who cooked this program think? that they don’t really need the faculty to operate the University?
That this program was conceived and kept in secrecy, from faculty, that it did not benefit from the collegial deliberations which have made Harvard the great institution that it once was, is another terrifying sign of everything that is wrong at Harvard these days.
12/3/2009 1:20 pm
Relax Anon 1.07pm. No one who spent their career at Harvard would want their obituary in the Gazette to read
‘Professor X retired from Harvard in 2009-2010. For a long time this would be short hand for ‘who took $200,000 from Harvard to retire amidst a severe fiscal crisis that compromised the ability of Harvard faculty to do first rate scholarship and teaching’
12/3/2009 1:22 pm
It is a good thing to know that, since Larry’s departure, Harvard behaves in distinct ways from Wall Street
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/business/29bonus.html
12/3/2009 1:43 pm
You can’t leave under this program until end of academic year 2011 at the earliest, anyway. And, anon 1:07, if you think the kind of staff and program cuts at Harvard — and more — aren’t a nationwide phenomenon (University of California), then you really haven’t been paying attention.
12/3/2009 8:43 pm
In 2005, a group of faculty with integrity confronted a President who had changed the culture of the institution, marginalizing faculty from governance…
”Every time, Mr. President, you show a lack of respect for a faculty member’s intellectual expertise, you break ties in our web,” Professor Hoxby said to Dr. Summers, ”Every time you humiliate or silence a faculty member, you break ties in our web.”
What has changed at Harvard since? How has the intellectual expertise of the faculty been invoked to solve the current challenges of the University? Where are those faculty now?
12/3/2009 8:58 pm
Were those faculty are now very much depends on what they said at the January 2005 meeting with Summers.
Hoxby, who spoke most eloquently, is gone to Stanford because Harvard did not make any efforts to retain her spouse.
Theda Skocpol who tried to mediate became the Dean who could have been.
The members of the Task Force on Women, became President and Deans.
Since those who were most critical of Summers then are now the establishment they might ask themselves in what way the culture they have created has overcome the most fundamental failings of the culture Summers created.
12/3/2009 10:06 pm
Taking $200 at this time is equivalent to participating in firing one of those laid off and taking their salary for the next four years.
12/3/2009 11:02 pm
anon 1:07:
* Other Universities do not fire first their librarians and staff members when they have financial troubles.
* Other Universities don’t have 92 freakin’ libraries.
12/4/2009 10:16 am
Anonymous 8:58 pm writes: “Since those who were most critical of Summers then are now the establishment they might ask themselves in what way the culture they have created has overcome the most fundamental failings of the culture Summers created.”
I’m not quite sure in what way(s) we are the establishment now. Could you please explain that a little, Anonymous 8:58pm?
12/4/2009 10:57 am
Sorry, Anonymous 8:58 pm, I now see you wrote “January 2005 meeting.” I was thinking of the February 2006 meeting, where 15 speakers expressed criticisms of President Summers.
12/4/2009 2:04 pm
The establishment is the Corporation not the January 2005 meeting attendees. I see no pre-Summers post-Summers difference in the establishment’s conception of Harvard.
12/4/2009 3:04 pm
Good point, Feste.
12/4/2009 7:29 pm
Has President Faust consulted faculty for any of the decisions made during her administration?
12/5/2009 9:37 am
An enterprising Crimson reporter could ask Dean David Elwood at the Kennedy School why he refused to have the school participate in the program.
12/5/2009 10:10 am
Another Globe editorial pointing out Harvard’s incompetent management
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2009/12/05/for_harvard_success_isnt_measured_in_financial_returns/
12/5/2009 10:15 am
Very interesting, Anonymous 9:37 am. Inquiring minds would like to know.
This blog discussion has explored several questions thus far: whether faculty lay-offs might follow the “golden handshakes” (we seem to agree that it’s not likely), whether individuals eligible for the new retirement packages will find any of the alternatives attractive, who the new establishment is and whether their view of Harvard has changed since Summers left the Presidency.
Now I’d like to ask another question: what will happen to departments and programs if many of those eligible for the new retirement provisions decide to take them? (Bear in mind that one of my departments is quite small.)
12/5/2009 10:38 am
Good question Judith. Wouldn’t you think that deliberations about questions such as the one you pose among faculty should have preceded the decision to roll out this program?
Doesn’t the faculty deserve to know exactly WHO MADE THE DECISION to offer the golden handshakes, who participated in the decision, and in particular, whether any members of the professoriate were involved in this decision?
12/5/2009 10:42 am
“We must believe, as [Nelson] Mandela said, in our ‘capacity to make history,’’’ Faust said last week in South Africa. “We in the United States and you in South Africa have been granted a very special moment in the history of the world and in its progress towards freedom. It is our challenge to make the most of it.”
Given Harvard’s current predicaments one has to wonder exactly what President Faust means by making the most of the very special moment she has been granted to make history.
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/11/president-faust-johannesburg/
12/5/2009 11:00 am
Yes indeed, Anonymous (or Anonymice). It’s enough to make the most determined optimist deeply cynical.
12/5/2009 2:32 pm
It is widely understood and part of the culture of the University that decisions affecting the composition of the faculty must involve the faculty. This is the reason there is so much faculty input in decisions about appointing each faculty member, more so in decisions about creating new faculty lines, and even more so in decisions about terminating one faculty.
This decision which can significantly change the character of the faculty, because it involves 25% of them, necessarily is one that should also have involved faculty deliberation.
12/5/2009 3:07 pm
I am not unhappy about the way the retirement program was done. It wasn’t a surprise — I think Peter Gomes asked in a faculty meeting months ago whether such a plan might be forthcoming, and wasn’t told no. Certainly it was in the air in recent weeks. And it’s an extremely technical matter, in which no member of the faculty would be expert.
The money’s gone, so the faculty has to shrink. It’s perfectly rational, as it was with staff, to calculate a way to get that to happen by retirements. A blanket hiring freeze might be slower and less effective. OK so far. Very costly in lost experience (and research dollar generation, in the sciences), and scary that it has to occur, but I can’t agree with those who are outraged that it happened without faculty input.
The big question, also raised above, is what will the shape of the faculty be when the dust settles, and how is that to be determined? Well, we have working groups, whose ideas may or may not matter. But even if they do, there is no meta-working-group that has been thinking about the crucial ratios: Nat Sci::Soc Sci::Hum. The unanswered, $64K dollar question is, what will those ratios be in a decade, and how is that being decided? (And then, of course, where growth and shrinkage will occur within those units, by departments.)
12/5/2009 7:57 pm
“Et es bruto” Harry? for thirty pieces of silver?
12/5/2009 9:58 pm
I’m not eligible, if that’s what you’re suggesting.
12/5/2009 11:05 pm
there are two ways to think about the effects of this program. In both cases it is clear the faculty should have been consulted since they will bear the brunt of the impact:
a) The program does not have an effect, i.e. the amount offered is not enough to attract significant numbers of faculty to retire. In this case funds will be spent only on faculty who would have retired any way. Since this program is pricey, a full extra year of compensation for those faculty retiring, there are obvious alternate uses that the program could have gone to, such as hiring senior faculty, financial aid for students, support for librarians, and so on. It is clear that the faculty should have been engaged in deliberation on which of these possible uses have the greatest value to the central mission of the university at this time of contraction.
b) The program does have an effect, and encourages a sizable number of senior faculty who would not have otherwise retired to do so in response to the sizable extra compensation this program provides. Under this scenario, up to a full quarter of the faculty could retire as a result of the program, earlier than they would have otherwise. The impact of this could be devastating to some departments, to the ability to bring in research grants, to teaching. It is evident that the full faculty should have been involved in deliberating whether such massive reshaping of the composition of the faculty was desirable at this time.
This program is a big deal for Harvard. Up to 36 million dollars, and up to a quarter of the most experienced and recognized faculty lost to teaching and to research. These are not trivial changes. It is troubling that they were made in secrecy and by a rather small number of people. Those who made these decisions should remember that they do not own Harvard. They are only the stewards of trust placed in them. This trust can erode very quickly if that power is abused or used with consequences that faculty and students perceive as undermining the fundamental qualities of Harvard.
12/5/2009 11:19 pm
Where is the author of that book on Harvard’s soul who had the courage to stand up for academic values?
To say that the faculty was informed because ‘Peter Gomes was not told no’ in response to a question about whether such a plan might be forthcoming is ridiculous.
Maybe the alleged reasons Summers was criticized were just a cover for ulterior motives, because some of the core issues that the criticism focused on have not changed.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/05/27/ex_dean_says_harvard_run_like_day_care/
12/6/2009 1:15 am
Harry, your 3:07 pm comment struck me as depressing and defeatist.
Would you please explain why you think it was acceptable to develop a faculty retirement program without faculty input? It may be an extremely technical matter and perhaps there are no faculty members expert on the subject, but surely there must be some who could master the topic well enough to participate in a meaningful discussion.
Do you approve of excluding faculty from the decision-making process or have you given up hope that the ideas emerging from faculty committees and working groups have any influence on those who control Harvard’s fate?
12/6/2009 4:19 am
I was a member of two different committees that explored the question of retirement in the pre-Summers period. The first committee was responding prospectively to the removal of the retirement age cap, and the second was continuing that response after retirement at age 70 was no longer mandatory. The big issue was how to encourage older professors to retire and make way for a younger generation. A great deal of anecdotal information in those years suggested that some people would be happier about the idea of retiring if they were permitted to teach half-time for a period before they retired fully. But somehow no plans were adopted.
The situation now is a different one. As Harry Lewis formulates it, “The money’s gone, so the faculty has to shrink.” Encouraging retirements is certainly one way to go. But given that many of the positions vacated will not be filled by younger scholars, the question is how departments, programs, and FAS as a whole will be shaped as a result. There will certainly be several years of rather haphazard restructuring, and any lopsidedness will probably be corrected only after some time has elapsed. During that period, there may well be gaps in curricular offerings. It’s unfortunate that the President and Deans haven’t indicated how they intend to address this problem.
Finally, let me come back once again to my idée fixe (sorry, everyone!). We expanded the size of the faculty in FAS not because of vainglorious ambition but because we wanted to achieve a student-faculty ratio similar to that of some of our competitors.
Now we have dismissed many of our adjuncts (i.e. TAs, as opposed to TFs), we have a general embargo on visiting professors, and have already increased the target size of sections. Our students have been concerned about hot breakfasts and shuttle buses; but larger class sizes will also affect their well-being.
12/6/2009 7:59 am
Thank you Professor Ryan for demonstrating that faculty members indeed have the capacity to raise intelligent insights on issues of significant importance to the ability of the university to achieve its core purposes.
And thank you also Richard Bradley for providing Professors such as Judith Ryan, Richard Thomas and Harry Lewis a forum in which to deliberate about such important issues. At other universities such fora take place in the university themselves, because President and Deans value the insights of their faculty and understand that such deliberations are the means to resolve complicated questions such as those raised by Professor Ryan.
It is evident that at Harvard a different model of governance has long been in place, probably exacerbated under Summers’ presidency, notoriously unchanged to this day.
12/6/2009 8:32 am
An entire generation of Harvard graduates will forever remember some of the more important lessons they learned at Harvard. This generation should be given a special name so that historians and journalists can follow up their achievements over time. They will be future leaders of banking, finance, business, the arts, the sciences, the environment and national and international politics. Without a doubt the quality of their character will help define the future of the nation, and perhaps of the world. What are some of those lessons?
1. A large, powerful and respected institution can generate expectations in the communities where it is located and back up on those expectations, without prior notice, without accountability.
2. The same institution can violate the fundamental rules of financial management, and invest operating funds in the stock market. It can even borrow funds to do this. When the logical outcome of such foolishness happens no one will be accountable for those decisions.
3. When the institution is faced with the results of the ineptitude of its managers, it will then lay off a sizable number of its working force, starting with those most vulnerable, without regard for the impact of those layoffs on the lives of those laid off or on the students they served. That this decision takes place in the midst of the worst economic recession in decades should have no bearing in the decision.
4. Next in the line of actions of those unable to manage the consequences of their incompetence will be a program to encourage a reduction in size of the core group that carries out the central function of the institution (the professors) without regard for how this will impact students, research or the very life of some departments.
5. Amidst what most observers would recognize as a crisis of unprecedented scope, compromising vital functions in the institution, the CEOs will give themselves significant salary raises.
6. Watching in silence over this erosion of fundamental institutional values will be the faculty, those students and their parents entrusted to educate them so they could be well prepared to lead.
7. To appease those who might raise concerns over the gravity of these practices, the leaders of the institution will deliberately feed the rumor mill continued allegations that to the extent there should be any accountability for all these problems it should lay clearly with a previous CEO, gone over a thousand days and a thousand and one nights ago.
What should this new generation of Harvard graduates be called?
12/6/2009 10:23 am
Nothing immoral is going on with the way the faculty retirement program was developed, as far as I can see. Thanks to Prof. Ryan for recalling those focus groups where it was discussed. I am frankly baffled that this program is seen as dark and insidious. Did anyone say that about the staff early retirement program? To be sure, we are going to be a weakened institution when the dust settles. There is plenty of blame to be heaped on those who got us into this mess. But let’s also recognize that we have to shrink. Like anyone else, faculty hope to retire someday, and in any organization that needs to shrink workforce, one way to do that is to make it financially possible for people to retire sooner when they want to do so later. I just don’t get all this blather about golden parachutes and pieces of silver. People who accept these offers are rational beings, that’s all. Sorry, all you big moralists who won’t allow your identities to be known. I must be a bad person.
What I do worry about is the shape of the university when it’s all over, what areas will grow, what will shrink, what will disappear, forever. That is something for the faculty to talk about!
12/6/2009 1:56 pm
I believe the faculty retirement program disturbs the “big moralists” insofar as it is seen as symptomatic of disenfranchisement and opacity in decision-making. If you’re satisfied that faculty have input into decision-making commensurate with their role and that decision-making at Harvard is sufficiently transparent to all concerned, then we may have to agree to disagree.
Sorry about the anonymity but my instinct for survival tells me to keep my head down.
By the way, I think Harry Lewis is a good person.
12/6/2009 2:46 pm
Whether you think that decision-making is transparent to all concerned may have something to do with how you view the “working groups.” We may have to wait a bit to get a fuller picture of what they’re doing and whether they are managing to achieve goals that serve the larger educational mission of the College. The people in these groups are also good people. But how much clout will they have?
12/6/2009 5:23 pm
With respect to the future of the Nat Sci::Social Sci::Humanities ratios, what do you think the role will be of “research professor” positions? I don’t know if these are common at Harvard, but I have seen them at several other institutions. While details vary widely, they offer many of the privileges of “regular” faculty, such the ability to serve as prinicpal investigator and supervise students. They are supported through grants alone, might not involve required teaching, and do not offer tenure.
I bring this up because if the trend continues of more grants being available in the natural sciences than in social sciences or humanities, research professor positions would be one way to “fill the gap” in department research. If departments decide to go for this option, that would contribute to a shift in the natural science::social science::humanities ratio driven mainly by external forces.
12/6/2009 5:44 pm
My reading of the document about retirement privileges that was just circulated to faculty eligible for retirement is that there’s no substantial difference between “emeritus” and “research” professors at Harvard. Both are retired professors. Research professors do have to report ahead of time on their plans for each year, but otherwise, I see little difference between the two. It seems to be a matter of nomenclature. I think that many other universities understand something quite different by the term “research professor.”
12/6/2009 8:45 pm
Yes Harry, nothing immoral is going on at Harvard these days. It was all resolved when those of you who actively worked to get Larry Summers removed succeeded. Since then it is all fine and dandy. You should know.
12/7/2009 2:03 pm
Why don’t we hear anything from people in those workgroups? You’d think they would defend their positions.
12/7/2009 3:03 pm
I have a question too — why should the anonymice expect anyone to answer their questions? I am a defender of anonymity (see Anonymity on the Web). It has a long and honorable tradition in this country But it comes with a price–you can’t expect people to take you seriously, unless it’s evident why you are at risk if you identify yourself. The anonymous insults, and sneering about motives, seem more likely to be the work of cowards than of truth-tellers fearful for their well-being. So no one should be surprised that such methods tend to be conversation-stoppers.
12/7/2009 7:26 pm
… that the faculty could have participated in the decision about the early-retirement program. First, though, an apology for my anonymity. As a Harvard staff member, I can (and probably would) be fired for commenting publicly on University business without the permission of my superiors.
One of the key points in any early retirement program is that it must be voluntary; any hint that employees are being pressured to retire and the University leaves itself open to being sued for trying to lay people off without giving them layoff benefits. If the faculty were to discuss the early retirement program in advance of it being offered, could they guarantee that no one would say anything that could later be used in a lawsuit against the University? Since faculty deliberations (duly recorded in the minutes of the Faculty Meeting) would be an element in the decision-making process, anything said during those deliberations might be considered to be coming from the management of the University. It seems pretty likely that at least one person would say something about certain people or departments being specifically targeted by the program. That’s the kind of statement that could be used in court to show that the early retirement program is just a disguised mass layoff. Given all of this, how could the faculty have been included?
12/7/2009 7:43 pm
I don’t expect anyone to answer my questions, and with a moniker like “Feste” I can’t expect anyone to take me seriously. I’m not protected by tenure, and I can’t explain why I’m at risk without revealing my identity.
I think it unjust to accuse people of cowardice because they refuse to do something stupid in order to be taken seriously and to avoid being ignored. Equally unjust are insults and sneering. It’s all cheap shots in my book. But human beings are emotional creatures and will strike out when vexed. Hopefully there is no real malice behind such remarks, but of that there is no knowing, so “forgiveness give–and take.”
“For the rain it raineth every day”
12/8/2009 5:50 am
(I am not a lawyer, as Harry also said further up in this thread). Still, I’m not entirely convinced by the argument that “I don’t think…” puts forward. Many topics are discussed at FAS meetings, and people make all sorts of remarks, some of them not always well considered; but that’s what discussion is.
What contributors to this blog mean by “faculty input” into the decision to offer the new retirement packages could have taken several different forms. There might have been committees like the two I was on years ago. There could have been a “town hall” style meeting in which the opinion of faculty members was sought about the merits of different types of retirement packages. One of the current “working groups” might have taken a look at this question. Or any committee dealing with long-range planning and including some faculty members might have discussed it.
What we now need to know is whether the matter was discussed in some shape or form that would have elicited faculty input. What does the current administration regard as sufficient in that respect? “And a heigh-ho…”
12/8/2009 7:51 am
Thanks Professor Ryan for your good sense and clear sense about what it means to be a Professor. You stand alone in this blog, it is clear. More power to you.
12/8/2009 8:35 am
I, too, enjoy the comments from Prof. Ryan and other faculty here. Now a question. The faculty retirement offer seems fairly flexible and quite generous. The number of retirements each year of faculty is really tiny, and as a group, faculty are getting significantly older.
How would this program be different if faculty had the input via committee or faculty meeting discussion?
12/12/2009 4:26 am
Overall, the UC approach to the budget crisis seems to have been the better one. A graduated pay cut across the university with faculty taking an 8% pay cut on average seems harsh, but it preserves the unity of the enterprise through shared sacrifice. By making the payroll reduction come through furloughs as opposed to pay cuts, faculty are given the option of making up that 8% through external grants - thereby protecting those with research programs that are externally competitive. Perhaps a bit unfair to the humanities with less external funding relative to the sciences, but at least there is no discrimination within the university.
If the jokers in Sacramento had their priorities right (like not spending $50,000/year per prisoner - mostly in for minor drug offences), they could stop the bleeding of the greatest public university system in the world, but I think the overall approach to the crisis has still been better at UC than at Harvard.
12/14/2009 7:25 am
December 13, 2009 Chronicle of Higher Education has an article that is possibly relevant to the present discussion, reminding us that retirement is not just about money. See below.
‘We’ll Work for Free,’ Say Retired Professors, but Colleges Struggle With How to Use Them’ The point here is that if Universities could find some better role in this fiscal crises (and more generally) for senior faculty to have a significant and benign role, it might give them more incentive to retire. These individuals still want to be part of the enterprise, to contribute and retirement often closes the door to this opportunity.
http://chronicle.com/article/Well-Work-for-Free-Say/49444/