Dear FAS Community,
At heart, and by experience, I am a scientist. I have spent my life exploring the mysteries of our planet – from conducting sometimes dangerous physics experiments in my parent’s garage to, more recently, understanding the evolution of our genome. Curiosity has been my guide to discovery, whether in my lab on Divinity Avenue or now in my office in University Hall. As we begin the Fall term, I’m reminded that for all of us, those returning and those new to campus, Harvard is a place of discovery – about ourselves and the world around us, about subjects we know and, importantly, about those we have yet to uncover.
Here’s the thing about a lab, and about Harvard: it’s a place where you have the freedom to wonder out loud, to change your mind or change the minds of others. You can engage across generations and disciplines. In my lab, undergraduates work alongside graduate students and postdocs, and if someone, anyone – no matter who – finds something interesting, we follow it, wherever it may lead.
The freedom to follow your curiosity, to ask questions, to challenge the status quo, is at the heart of our academic mission. For the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, I am committed to putting that fundamental pursuit of academic excellence at the center of everything we do, and the opportunity for discovery that is so important to our students, their Harvard journey, and their impact in the world.
Harvard is an extraordinary place. Faculty are creating transformative experiences for students in our classrooms, advancing world-changing research in our labs and libraries, and nurturing a community in the FAS where curiosity leads to courageous risk-taking, and experimenting feeds our learning, and the knowledge we generate extends from campus to ultimately benefit society. This critical work couldn’t happen without the expertise and commitment of our dedicated staff, who work with intention and creativity to support our core mission of research, teaching, and learning. That is Harvard at its best, and it’s the experience that I am determined to move forward as dean.
Achieving that vision of Harvard requires not only hard work and determination, but also a sense of partnership and shared purpose. After a challenging year, there is important work to be done to rebuild trust, cultivate belonging, and strengthen community – essential goals we have to work together to achieve.
Across the FAS, we will continue to earn that trust by recognizing and engaging different perspectives, experiences, and voices and communicating clearly around expectations, practices, and process. That work is ongoing. It will require each of us to learn and strengthen our skills in communicating across our differences, in listening, and encouraging the principles and frameworks of civil discourse. We won’t always get it right the first time. As a scientist, I am used to that. But, if we have the courage and the clarity of purpose to keep moving forward, to learn from our missteps and welcome the insights of our community, we will continue to make progress.
As we start this new academic year, it is important for all of us to recognize that we are part of this exceptional FAS community, thousands of people engaged in varied pursuits across a landscape that stretches across the broadest possible spectrum of academic fields. We also have a shared responsibility to reach out to each other – to connect across discipline, interest, purpose, and belief – to strengthen and build that community which makes everything else possible.
Harvard is what we make of it. There is no limit to what we can discover and create together.
Sincerely,
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