FAS Faculty Meeting (Dec. 2, 2025)
Edgerley Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Hopi Hoekstra used the last Faculty Meeting of the fall term to underscore her solutions-based approach to present challenges while keeping an eye toward investment in the future. In her opening remarks, she thanked faculty for their "creativity and partnership" in a particularly difficult financial moment.
"Through intentional, broad-based planning — across all FAS units — we are beginning to identify solutions that I like to think of as two-for-ones, or "two-fers": changes that both create financial capacity and make us better," she said, pointing to efforts such as re-examining the FAS administrative model and relocating units from pricey leased spaces to ones owned by FAS.
"This is not a challenge we can or will solve overnight, or even in a single year. But understanding it clearly has focused us on two imperatives: that our decisions must be financially responsible, and that they must be in service to strengthening our academic core," she added.
FAS Dean for Faculty Affairs and Planning Nina Zipser presented on faculty trends. She highlighted current faculty numbers: 744 ladder faculty (of which 565 are tenured and 179 are tenure track), reflecting an increase of 13 from the previous academic year. The increase was due to several factors – notably, higher-than-expected acceptance of offers made before the hiring freeze begun in March and lower-than-expected faculty departures. Zipser also gave updates on tenure review outcomes, showing a largely consistent rate of positive tenure decisions during the last 12 years; and faculty retirements, which were higher in 2024 and 2025 (28 and 19, respectively), when Hoekstra offered an incentivized option, compared to the 2010s (when they averaged 12 per year).
The annual faculty trend report was followed by a presentation by Professors Danielle Allen (Government), William Kirby (History), Jill Lepore (History), and Dr. William Anderson (Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology), who shared recommendations from the University’s Faculty Senate Planning Body. Lepore recounted the century and a half of efforts on the part of the faculty to form a senate, and called the initiative, which will be voted on in spring 2026, "long overdue." The Faculty Senate would play an advisory, not legislative, role, and it would be comprised of 43 delegates (with 12 representing the FAS). Each member would serve a three-year term, with officers consisting of a chair/vice chair, secretary, treasurer, and parliamentarian.
Earlier in the meeting, a motion presented by Harvard Summer School Dean Sandra Naddaff on the list of 2026 Summer School courses was approved. Memorial Minutes for Karel Frederik Liem, Henry Bryant Bigelow Professor of Ichthyology, and Roy Parviz Mottahedeh, Gurney Professor of History, Emeritus, were also shared.
Lauren K. Williams, Dwight Parker Robinson Professor of Mathematics, closed out the business portion of the meeting, presenting her research on the positive Grassmannian, a shape with structural properties with utility in the fields of physics, geometry, and more. Introducing Harvard’s newest awardee of the MacArthur Foundation’s "genius grant," Hoekstra praised Williams’ ability to uncover "deep, often surprising, connections between abstract mathematics and real-world phenomena — from the behavior of waves and tsunamis, to the flow of traffic, to patterns in particle physics."
"What makes Lauren’s research especially impressive — and especially valuable for all of us, regardless of discipline — is that she combines the precision of pure theory with a willingness to ask big, cross-disciplinary questions," she said.