Will Harvard Continue to Lead the Charge? - Part 96

From the Harvard Crimson: The power to grant or deny tenure is a prerogative that faculty have long held sacred. But at Harvard, the final decisions to shut the door on tenure cases have increasingly been made out of departments’ hands — and in direct opposition to the outcome of departmental votes. In a presentation delivered Tuesday to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Nina Zipser, the FAS dean for faculty affairs and planning, reported that the share of internal FAS tenure applications denied at the departmental level has fallen over the past decade.

Under former Harvard President Drew G. Faust, who held office from 2013 to 2018, the figure sat at an average of 61 percent. It dropped to 44 percent under Lawrence S. Bacow, who led Harvard through mid-2023. Since then — in the two years encompassing the short-lived presidency of Claudine Gay and the start of Alan S. Garber ’76’s term — the share has declined even further, to just 30 percent.

That means that most candidates whose tenure cases were rejected in the past two years had received approval from a majority of tenured faculty in their departments, only to see the results of the departmental vote overruled by committees or administrators at later stages of the appointment process...

Zipser also discussed faculty retirements, which reached a 20-year record high during the 2023-2024 academic year, with 28 retirees.

Full story at https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/12/3/harvard-tenure/.