Dear FAS community members,
With our spring semester now well underway, I write to share two announcements of new efforts spanning the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
Classroom Social Compact Committee
Harvard’s teaching and learning environments are most effective when students speak, listen, and ask questions of each other with curiosity and respect, as highlighted by the College’s intellectual vitality initiative. Employing the skills and framework of civil discourse in the classroom is one way we increase the likelihood that a broad range of perspectives will be heard and that participants will open themselves to new ideas. Another is to ensure that everyone in the classroom – students and instructors alike – has a shared understanding of how they together contribute to an environment that promotes discovery, learning, and meaningful dialogue.
To support our students in their intellectual growth and our faculty in their teaching mission, I have charged a faculty committee to engage our community in a conversation about the FAS classroom. I am enormously grateful to Maya Jasanoff, X.D. and Nancy Yang Professor and Coolidge Professor of History, and David Laibson, Robert I. Goldman Professor of Economics and a Faculty Dean of Lowell House, for agreeing to co-chair this important effort.
Through this process, the Classroom Social Compact Committee (CSCC) will elicit the perspectives and insights of our faculty and students and consider current policies and fundamental values, like our commitment to academic freedom. The ultimate goal is to articulate in simple, clear terms our community’s shared goals for the FAS classroom and the roles of students, both undergraduate and graduate, and their instructors in fostering them. In addition to developing these statements, the CSCC will provide recommendations for strengthening and nurturing a vibrant classroom.
As the work of the committee gets underway, more information will be made available about opportunities to participate and to share your input.
Senior Adviser on Academic Community Engagement
I am also delighted to announce that Brenda Tindal, FAS Chief Campus Curator, will serve as my Senior Adviser on Academic Community Engagement. In this role, Brenda will bring new intentionality to FAS’s efforts to advance a sense of inclusion and belonging centered around our academic mission for our entire community of students, faculty, researchers and staff.
As the FAS Chief Campus Curator, a role that emerged from the recommendations of the FAS Task Force on Visual Culture and Signage, Brenda has launched a thoughtful and focused effort to make our campus environment a site of educational opportunity and affirmative community. In this new role, she will continue reimagining some of our most treasured campus spaces and will identify new and creative ways to bring us together.
Her first steps will be to listen and gather input. Brenda’s expertise as a public historian will be invaluable as she develops programs that engage the breadth of perspectives in the FAS, spark dialogue, and promote opportunities to learn and collaborate across differences and disciplines. I couldn’t be more excited to have the benefit of Brenda’s insights and partnership in this new role.
These new efforts join two other initiatives, on civil discourse and artificial intelligence, that reach across the FAS and pull us together, across our many disciplines, roles, and experiences. Each is a powerful demonstration that, collectively, we have the wisdom and insight we need to make FAS and Harvard stronger, when we move forward together.
I am excited for the work ahead and grateful for the contributions of all those who participate.
In community,
Hopi
Hopi Hoekstra
Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences
C. Y. Chan Professor of Arts and Sciences
Xiaomeng Tong and Yu Chen Professor of Life Sciences