Hall), the elegant Loeb House (home to the governing boards), and elsewhere. No cost estimates or timelines accompanied these ideas, and given FAS’s current, enormous spending on House renewal, significant new investments are not likely immediately.
The next day, Dean Smith unveiled the MITCHELL/HPAC STEPHANIE initial membership of the committee that will review the USGSO policy—including Experience Commencement 2017 Khurana as co-chair (see the full list at har- with Harvard Magazine vardmag.com/usgso-com-17). He charged it with: This year’s Commencement will feature Mark Zuckerberg, John • reviewing existing policy, reports, and Kerry, Sally Yates, and others. Read our in-depth coverage of the data; • considering “whether there are other events, faces, and themes of Commencement week, May 23-26. means of achieving our stated goals, includ- ing and especially that of fully advancing the harvardmag.com/commencement non-discrimination objectives reflected in the current policy, and to evaluate whether any would be more effective than our cur- with “the College’s policy regarding ment declared particular kinds of rent policy”; and the principle of non-discrimination, organizations illegal and demanded • proposing, “should more effective means particularly with regard to member- oaths of non-membership from all be identified, changes or expansions to the ship in unrecognized single-gender college students. The faculty would current policy or a new approach.” social organizations.” What happens be on firmer ground to resist such A report is due for public consumption by if a student refuses to take this affir- demands if it did not require similar next fall (at which point the existing policy mation on the principle that they are oaths from our students. presumably will have taken effect). opposed to such oaths? Would they Hence, the motion—which is deliberately Putnam professor of organismic and evo- be in contempt of the College’s policy phrased to test the sense of the faculty, and lutionary biology David Haig is a member and thereby ineligible for the afore- the implementation mechanism, rather than of the new policy-review committee. He was a mentioned awards and offices? What to address matters such as faculty versus proponent of Harry Lewis’s motion oppos- happens if a student cannot in con- administrative jurisdiction or the underly- ing the sanctions policy; that motion, as not- science affirm they are in compliance ing policy itself. If it proceeds to full air- ed, is now suspended during the policy re- with the College’s policy because the ing before the FAS, it will be interesting to view. As he wrote then, “The current policy student sincerely believes in a differ- see whether the objections to enforcing an attempts to coerce the choices of students, ent principle of non-discrimination? oath-like affirmation are widespread among by changing their self-interest, without a Where is the space for dissent? Who the professoriate (see harvardmag.com/ fundamental change in their values. We risk determines the policy and what are usgso-oath-17). changing the choice without changing the the mechanisms of revision? Are there In the meantime, the debate over formal- chooser.” constraints on unilateral changes (by ly single-gender social organizations has Now, in reaction to the implementation self-appointed arbiters of student vir- grown far beyond the bounds that anyone committee’s recommendation that students tue) of the policy to be affirmed? conceivably imagined, and continues to ab- affirm their compliance with the College’s I consider the requirement for such sorb an extraordinary amount of the fac- USGSO policy, and its enforcement mecha- an affirmation to be a dangerous prec- ulty’s time and attention. nism—both accepted by Khurana—Haig edent. What if some future govern v john s. rosenberg and jonathan shaw has introduced a separate motion objecting to that process. He has asked for consider- ation of language that reads, “This faculty mencement. The Business School’s Klarman does not approve of Harvard College re- News Briefs Hall conference center is well under way, as quiring a student to make an oath, pledge is renovation of the adjacent Soldiers Field or affirmation about whether the student Cranes Crescendo Park apartment complex. Just across West- belongs to a particular organization or cat- The already torrid pace of construc- ern Avenue from that campus, below-grade egory of organizations.” tion around campus is about to intensify. construction for the $1-billion science and As Haig explained the motion: The renovation and expansion of Winthrop engineeering complex has proceeded for The laudable aim of gender-in- House, the largest undergraduate-residence months; come May, steel is expected on site clusivity has metamorphosed into a “renewal” to date, will surge toward comple- for the visible superstructure (pointing to- proposal that students seeking cer- tion in August—and the even larger Lowell ward a 2020 opening). And Harvard Kennedy tain awards or offices are required House makeover, itself a two-year project, School continues to remake virtually its en- to affirm that they are in compliance is scheduled to begin promptly after Com- tire campus from the inside out.
Harvard Magazine 21
Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard's Journal Alongside those projects and other, less- er ones—in all, $2 billion of capital invest- Yesterday’s News ments, give or take—still more construc- From the pages of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and Harvard Magazine tion is on tap. Harvard Planning Office’s “Town Gown Report” to Cambridge iden- tifies multiple pending projects, including 1927 The debating team has won four lems in implementing a Chicano-Boricua three major ones: of six matches during a spring-break tour studies program at Harvard. • The Law School has secured zoning ap- of the Middle West, the editors note. In proval for a new, 21,000-square-foot building each debate, Harvard supported the af- 1997 The Faculty of Arts and Sci- at 1607-1615 Massachusetts Ave., replacing firmative side of the question: “Resolved, ences adds a new quantitative reasoning vacant one-story storefronts at the corner that the American College is a Failure.” course requirement to the Core Cur- of Everett Street, to house public-service riculum, replacing the former test-out clinical programs; construction is planned 1952 “Korea—symbol of the unde- option. late this year. clared war between East and West— • The University is preparing to reno- continues to dominate the academic year Harvard’s first chair devoted exclusively vate the Arthur M. Sackler Building, whose 1951-52,” with the University “steering a to environmental issues is endowed by collections have been consolidated at the course somewhere between total mobi- Gilbert Butler Jr. ’59 to honor the mem- renovated Harvard Art Museums (HAM), lization and business as usual”; 40 percent ory of his father. freeing its extensive galleries for other uses. of the freshmen are enrolled in the army, Among them will be programmatic space navy, and air force ROTC programs. More than 300 people gather in the Yard for the history of art and architecture de- for the unveiling of a plaque on Matthews partment, the main tenant already based 1962 Joseph Russin ’64 guides the Hall commemorating Caleb Cheeshah- there; the Arts@29 undergraduate art-mak- four-plus-ton Sonita to a sweepstakes teaumuck, A.B. 1665, and the other four ing center (relocating from Garden Street trophy for Harvard at the first Intercol- initial Native American students at Har- to within a block of the Carpenter Cen- legiate Elephant Race at Orange County vard’s Indian College. ter, home to the principal studios); and the State College in Fullerton, California. Graduate School of Design, which is land- 2002 Following a year of debate and locked and still planning its own on-site 1972 East Asian studies becomes Har- data-gathering, the Faculty of Arts and expansion. Construction is expected this vard’s newest concentration.…Mexican- Sciences makes it easier for undergradu- year. (Not involved is relocation of the fine American and Puerto Rican students ates to study abroad, and more difficult arts library, which was moved from Werner schedule a conference to explore prob- for them to earn academic honors. Otto Hall before it was razed to make way for the HAM project. The library continues to reside in semi-exile from the art histori- ans, in the basement of Littauer Center, near the Law School. At some point, Littauer itself will be reconfigured to better suit the evolving needs of the huge econom- ics department, the major occupant—but it is not known when that work will advance.) • And in the dreary- but-essential category, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences also plans to re- place the entire heating, ventilation, air condition- ing, and exhaust system for its huge Biological Labora- tories complex. Thus, University build- ing budgets remain intact, even as pressure on schools’ operating budgets becomes evident (see next item). vj.s.r.
Illustration by Mark Steele
Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746