After the turmoil of the last several months, do you think the Board of Overseers should step in to reassure donors? If so, how?
I’m not sure it’s the place of the Board of Overseers to take on that role. I think the Board of Overseers has a very important role. It’s to be outside voices who are trusted to give viewpoints and ideas and critiques for the University. But I don’t believe the Board really should be speaking on behalf of the University — the University has its own leadership to do that.
But I do think — through its actions and otherwise — the University should try to reassure all stakeholders, not just donors, about what it’s doing and how it’s addressing issues. I don’t think there’s a specific need to treat donors in a way that gives them special access or greater input than other stakeholders in the University.
Do you think the current Board of Overseers election process is fair? Would you support lowering the write-in candidate signature threshold?
Well, first off, my recollection, my understanding, is that Harvard is one of the few universities or major institutions that has an election for alumni for members of various boards. I think most institutions just appoint their members. And so I think Harvard already goes beyond what a lot of universities do.
I also think that the nomination process has gotten more open in recent years. Now any alum can propose the name of anybody through an open online process. I know a couple of my friends did that for me.
I do think the petition process adds value and brings in people who might otherwise not be considered. But I also think it’s important to have some kind of threshold so that the process remains manageable. I’m not certain that it’s unnecessarily high at this point.
As Harvard now prepares to select Claudine Gay’s permanent successor, would you like to see any changes relative to the search process that selected Gay?
I am not specifically familiar with what the process was. So it’s hard for me to propose changes. What I would say is, it should be a very broad process that casts a wide net, looks for the best candidates from anywhere in the country or the world, and that it should be a rigorous process where all the candidates being considered should be fully vetted and all asked hard questions. And information should be gathered so that the University makes the best possible decision.
Recently, Harvard has grappled with campus antisemitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Palestinian racism. In light of these issues, what is your perspective on the current state of campus culture?
Well, first off, the attacks that we saw, verbal and otherwise, were heartbreaking. The entire Harvard community was shocked and appalled by some of the things that we saw, including relating to campus, and there really is no place for hate, in my view anywhere, at any university or at Harvard.
I think what the events help to highlight, though, is that a university only works if you have a campus in which there’s a culture of trust and goodwill and mutual respect among all the members of the community, including students. And I know that’s hard to come by nowadays anywhere in our society, but for students to learn and have the opportunity to really grow together, we need to have that kind of campus community, and it seems that we do have some work to do in that regard.
I would hope that the Board of Overseers and all the other parts of Harvard’s leadership would work hard to try to build that kind of culture for current and future students.
Do you support Harvard committing to institutional neutrality? In what areas should Harvard remain neutral?
I do think one area that Harvard does not need to remain neutral on is any issues that relate to Harvard, specifically: our faculty, students, and administration and our educational and research missions, and also the higher education community. I think if there are issues that affect Harvard or affect the higher education community, then Harvard should speak out, because Harvard is viewed as and should be viewed as a leader in the higher education community.
As for public policy and even foreign policy issues that aren’t connected to that educational mission, I do believe that there needs to be more restraint than we’ve seen so far. We’ve learned how taking positions on certain issues can create rifts in the community. At this point, I would generally support the idea of refraining from speaking out on public policy issues.
But what I am not certain about at this point, having just really started studying the issue, is whether there are other categories like the educational mission that need to be exceptions. Once the policy is adopted, it has to be followed in order to maintain the credibility of the community. So I want to make sure that we get it right, and that we address all possible situations.
The University of Chicago, perhaps the most high-profile school to follow a policy of institutional neutrality, has cited that policy to reject calls from student activists to divest from certain financial interests, including in fossil fuels. Do you believe a policy of institutional neutrality should extend to investment decisions?
That’s a good example of what I was saying about how I’m still studying the issue. There are exceptions or categories or concepts that I certainly have not made a final decision on. Those are hard questions that I think we need to discuss as a Harvard community.
Unlike the other candidates, we did not ask Chuang whether he would support ending admissions preferences for legacies or the children of donors. In advance of the interview, Chuang communicated that he would not comment on the subject, citing the potential that he could hear cases relating to it in his role as a federal judge.
The past decade has seen a number of allegations of serious misconduct against tenured Harvard professors, ranging from repeated sexual harassment to falsification of data and other research misconduct. Still, to date, there are no known cases of Harvard revoking a professor’s tenure. In what cases, if any, do you believe revoking tenure is justified?
I think we can all agree that sexual harassment, academic misconduct requires accountability. Whether that can occur within the current tenure structure, or whether there need to be modifications to the tenure process, or whether that accountability can be fully provided outside of that process — that’s something that I need to study more and fully understand.
In my own professional area, where members of the judiciary have, effectively, tenure or maybe something even stronger than tenure, individuals who have engaged in high-profile sexual harassment cases have been effectively removed, even though not necessarily through this formal process.
So there are probably ways by which people could be removed if the misconduct reaches a certain level. Whether that requires changing the policies or not, I don’t know. But I do think whether inside or outside that policy, there needs to be accountability.
Do you support the creation of an Ethnic Studies department?
Any way that we can broaden the education available to Harvard students, we should. The world is changing and evolving. There are communities within the United States and elsewhere that are critical parts of our community. And I think students of all backgrounds, whether from those communities or not should have the opportunity to learn and study those areas. Because the experiences of all the different communities that make up our country are important to understand for people to go off and become citizens and leaders.
So I think for all members of the Harvard community, ethnic studies can be of significant value. Whether that means adding a concentration or a department, I would be supportive of that. And I don’t think it necessarily needs to detract from the other disciplines. We have a broad curriculum, a broad range of concentrations, and I would support having more, including ethnic studies.
