Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Hopi Hoekstra convened the April Faculty Meeting one day after the federal government announced a review of more than $8 billion in University federal funding. “Much is at stake,” Hoekstra said to a packed Faculty Room in University Hall.
She quoted President Garber’s Monday message to the University, which noted that federal cuts will “halt-life-saving research and imperil important scientific research and innovation,” and described the impact on the FAS.
“(W)e have 505 principal investigators, taking up important questions across the broadest range of fields – from treatments for Type 1 diabetes…. to designing soft robotics. The work they do is in service to the public good,” Hoekstra said.
“In the FAS, we are organized and ready to respond immediately if our research funding is frozen or cancelled,” she said, describing plans within the divisions and SEAS to carry out an initial 30-day assessment of any action on grant-funded research.
The two-hour meeting began with celebrations of newly tenured faculty Roger Fu, John L. Loeb Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences (EPS), Professor Chris W. Kuzawa of Human Evolutionary Biology, and Fiamma Straneo, Gordon McKay Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering and Professor of EPS. Hoekstra also announced recently elected members of Faculty Council. Pol Antras, Robert G. Ory Professor of Economics, Ryan Enos, Professor of Government Durba Mitra, Richard B. Wolf Associate Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Kit Parker, Tarr Family Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics at SEAS, Alison Simmons, Samuel H. Wolcott Professor of Philosophy, and Melanie Matchett Wood, William Caspar Graustein Professor of Mathematics, will begin their terms in July.
Faculty approved changes related to Pass/Fail grading in two areas. They accepted the Standing Committee on General Education’s proposal that students, beginning with the Class of 2029, who take GenEd courses do so for letter grades only. Similarly, faculty favored Statistics Professor of the Practice Joseph K. Blitzstein’s motion that students must take their courses satisfying the Quantitative Reasoning with Data (QRD) requirement for letter grades (also beginning with the Class of 2029). A newly introduced motion to amend the GenEd proposal to include Sat/Unsat grading did not pass.
Daniel E. Lieberman, chair of Human Evolutionary Biology and Edwin M. Lerner Professor of Biological Sciences, saw his department’s motion to rename the Human Evolutionary Biology concentration “Human Biology, Behavior, and Evolution (HBBE)” pass as well.
An extended question period covered a range of topics from concern about two faculty who were asked to step down from leadership positions at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, to questions about the support available for international students. Vice President for Campus Services Sean Caron, who was in attendance with other members of the Harvard International Office, noted that the HIO team had grown from 21 to 25 people in the last six months to help respond to the increased need.
Jennifer Roberts, Drew Gilpin Faust Professor of the Humanities, closed the meeting with a Research Minute presentation that includes study of the Jet Propulsion lab team in 1965 that drew the first image transmitted from Mars with pastels on teletype paper The History of Art and Architecture professor, who described herself as an “astronomy superfan,” discussed the intersection of art and science given recent calls to colonize and occupy Mars. “Space resists possession. It’s an ecosystem,” she said. “It demands a new way of thinking.” Roberts is currently at work co-writing a book with artist Dario Robleto called “The Heartbeat at the Edge of the Solar System” about the EEG and EKG signatures that were engraved into the NASA Voyager Golden Record in 1977.