Harvard pursues an unfamiliar discipline
Faculty, students are forced to get by with less
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CAMBRIDGE - It's as if an heiress had lost her trust fund.
At Harvard University, the talk of billion-dollar losses in its massive endowment has blown in a new age of austerity across the campus.
Faculty, administrators, and students - who had been riding what one professor termed "the gravy train" for as long as anyone could remember - are suddenly living a different reality in Cambridge.
The cuts are big and small. There are the hiring freezes that run to the core of the university's mission. But there are also the cookies and soft drinks eliminated from small faculty gatherings. A noon-hour seminar series that used to provide catered lunches from local ethnic restaurants will now serve pizza.
Faculty members, who are not slated for raises next year, will be expected to pitch in on clerical work (Question: How many Harvard philosophy professors does it take to work a
"Harvard and other super-wealthy universities spent more than a decade believing the only limits they faced were in coming up with creative ways to spend their resources," said Theda Skocpol, professor of government and sociology. "They may not be well-prepared now to switch abruptly to a situation in which people have to pull together to be efficient and creative with much less."
In the past month, faculty have received letter after letter from the university president and deans, sounding alarms about the worsening financial realities and issuing decrees throughout the world's wealthiest university to start pinching pennies. They've attended endless meetings on how to retrench and cope amid tough times.
"People say, 'My God, Harvard?' It's like Warren Buffett or Donald Trump being worried about money," said David H. Barlow, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at Boston University. "People haven't had a chance to develop ways to be resilient to it. It's just not a threat they're accustomed to dealing with."
One professor said the day-to-day atmosphere on campus has grown gloomy.
"People have quickly begun to understand, at least on the inside, that this is really serious," said Andrew Gordon, a history professor and member of the faculty council. "The outside may tell us to quit our bellyaching. That's what my father told me last night."
Lest anyone cry "poor Harvard" in mock sympathy after taking a look at its nearly $30 billion endowment - still the largest in the nation despite a 22 percent drop since July - faculty do have serious concerns. At the top of their worries is losing out on a generation of young academic talent, as hiring has become virtually impossible.
The 720-member Faculty of Arts and Sciences was once able to pick off the brightest doctoral students from universities around the world without thinking twice. But now, Harvard's largest academic body, which grew by 13 percent in the last five years, will only commit to filling 15 of its 50 tenure-track openings for next year - strangling the core mission of the university and sending an insidious message across academia.
"We pride ourselves on going out and trying to attract the best faculty," said Michael D. Smith, dean of the arts and sciences faculty. "The thing that pains me the most is we have to scale back on that. It's somewhat new territory for us."
Department heads and professors have put in hundreds of hours of work for faculty searches - combing resumes, preparing reports to the deans, negotiating, and persuading colleagues of individuals' merits - only to see the positions disappear.
"To see all of this work, if not gone to waste, not coming to fruition in any foreseeable future is terribly frustrating," said Nancy Rosenblum, chairwoman of the government department, which had been slated to hire four professors.
The tight times are even forcing Harvard's 10 schools, notorious for operating in isolation, to - gasp - share with one another. Deans from each school met Friday to discuss possible scenarios, such as pooling IT staff or computer servers to save money. Schools could also rent meeting facilities from the business school instead of paying more for a hotel conference room.
Smaller budgets could also weaken Harvard's foreign language programs. A limit proposed on visiting faculty could mean classes become larger, caps are put on enrollment, or faculty are asked to teach longer hours.
Smith has also curtailed the travel budget, cutting his own nationwide jaunts to meet with alumni by 40 percent, he said. Now, he waits for them to pass through Cambridge. He also expect to see fewer consultants hired for various university projects. And instead of flying in world-famous lecturers, he's directing colleagues to look in their own backyard.
Gordon, the history professor, hosted a talk on Friday during which a Notre Dame professor spoke about photography in post-war Japan. Harvard's Asia Center alone holds about 10 such talks a week for audiences from all over New England. Harvard pays for a speaker's flight, three-night hotel stay, dinners, and a few hundred-dollar honorarium.
"Clearly, this is expensive," Gordon said. "But that's what makes Harvard an exciting place to be. There's no question next year we'll be doing less of that."
Budget cuts will also take a toll on the university's well-stocked libraries. Harvard's East Asian collection, with 1.2 million volumes, is the second largest in the nation after the Library of Congress, said Gordon, who serves on its advisory committee. Each year the library normally purchases 30,000 new volumes of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Tibetan, Manchu, and Mongolian works.
But during a meeting Friday, the committee was dealt a blow. It has been told it has to cut the $1 million acquisitions budget by 10 to 15 percent.
Even holiday parties for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences have been scaled back.
On Thursday, Harvard deans and administrators will gather in the faculty room in University Hall for one bash instead of two, normally held off-site. No spouses or other guests. Only wine, beer, soda; no hard liquor.
But the festivities will not entirely lose their glow. Harvard being Harvard, the faculty room is plush - adorned with crystal chandeliers, Oriental carpets, and marble busts and oil paintings of Harvard's presidents and famous alumni. The mint-green walls are accented with Greek columns. Revelers will feast on puff pastries, canapes, and other hors d'oeuvres as a student plays seasonal music from the grand piano in the corner.
"I want it to cost less but not seem like it costs less," Smith said. "We can't eliminate everything and make it miserable to be here."
Tracy Jan can be reached at tjan@globe.com.
