No restructuring satisfies everyone. It’s much easier to hide behind the notion that every priority is equally important. The harder leadership task is making the inevitable tradeoffs according to a clear organizing principle, even if having explicit priorities upsets people.
As the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ restructuring and layoffs approach, Harvard College seems to have a clear priority: the undergraduate experience.
In April, Dean of Harvard College David Deming said he was looking for “ways to trim that don’t sacrifice the student experience.” Three changes Deming previewed in a recent webinar for administrators suggest he’s applying that principle consistently:
Harvard College will revive the Freshman Dean’s Office (FDO) to oversee students’ first-year experience. FDO’s functions of first-year orientation, advising, and academics had been folded into the Dean of Students Office in 2018.
A new role, Secretary of the College, will report directly to Deming and bring together disciplinary functions related to academic integrity, student conduct, Title IX, and non-discrimination and anti-bullying.
Rather than completely reinventing its structure, Harvard College is largely returning to one it has operated successfully before when it had fewer administrators. Reviving the FDO will consolidate responsibility for the first-year experience and create a more direct line between orientation, advising, academics, and the College Dean. Because the College is launching new first-year orientation and advising initiatives this year, going back to a familiar organizational structure post-layoffs lowers implementation risk while leaving room to improve the programs themselves.
Creating the Secretary of the College role similarly consolidates responsibility and brings student policy and disciplinary functions closer to College leadership. That addresses a longstanding problem students, faculty, and administrators have identified: rules with uneven enforcement and diffuse accountability. In 2025, both Harvard’s Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias Task Force and its Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Palestinian Bias Task Force documented years of concerns about unclear processes and inconsistent enforcement of protest and harassment policies.
These issues extend beyond protests and discrimination. As generative AI use has spread to at least 88% of students, Deming has acknowledged that “for every one” clear-cut case reaching the Honor Council, “there are many cases where students are using AI in a more subtle way.” Under the new structure, the Administrative Board, Honor Council, and related policy bodies will sit closer to the Dean of the College, reducing layers between those processes and faculty leadership.
The return to five-day, in-person work may be the clearest example of prioritizing student experience despite tradeoffs. Harvard’s residential college experience is central to its educational model. Requiring administrators to be physically present aligns the administrative model with that promise to students and puts student-facing services back where students are.
But some administrators and the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers have opposed the decision, with HUCTW saying it would “strongly push back.” Deming defended the decision, explaining, “when staff are present, we’re responsive to students navigating difficult moments, to faculty with urgent needs, and to colleagues working through complex problems together. That responsiveness is not incidental to our mission. It is our mission.”
Every restructuring is ultimately judged by the tradeoffs it makes. Harvard College seems to have a clear priority in this restructuring. That may sharpen criticism because making priorities explicit also makes tradeoffs explicit. But leadership is rarely improved by obscuring the logic behind difficult choices. Whether this approach proves successful will depend on implementation decisions still to come — including who is appointed Freshman Dean and Secretary of the College — but Deming’s clarity gives those decisions, and the restructuring itself, a coherent logic against which they can be evaluated.
Ask 1636
Send us your Harvard and higher education questions!
Q: What’s going on in the government’s Title VI antisemitism lawsuit against Harvard from March?
Last week, Harvard filed a motion to dismiss the government’s lawsuit for failure to state a claim. The DOJ alleges Harvard failed to adequately address antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias on campus, including through “deliberate indifference,” negligence, selectively enforcing campus policies, and fostering a hostile campus environment for Jewish and Israeli students.
Harvard says the DOJ’s complaint should be thrown out without a trial because it “does not even attempt to allege an ongoing or impending violation of Title VI,” instead relying largely on allegations from the 2023-24 academic year. Harvard also says the DOJ hasn’t shown deliberate indifference and is trying to impose a negligence standard “not supported by any statute or precedent.”
If you find our newsletter valuable, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to support 1636 Forum’s mission.
Events
Virtual — July 28 from 11:00-12:00 pm ET: Harvard Business Impact is hosting Harvard College Dean David Deming (PhD ‘10) for a conversation on the growing value of human skills in an AI-driven economy, and how higher ed can better prepare students for the future of work. Register here.
FYIs
Two Longtime Managing Directors Depart Harvard Endowment
Two managing directors at Harvard Management Company (HMC), which manages the University’s endowment, have recently left the firm. Adam Goldstein left in May after more than nine years at HMC, while Elaine Chan departed within the last month after more than eight years.
Goldstein and Chan both joined HMC early in CEO Narv Narvekar’s tenure, during the period when HMC was rebuilding after a major restructuring. Goldstein was HMC’s highest-paid managing director in 2024, receiving nearly $3.5 million. Chan worked on HMC’s generalist team and had been expected to work out of HMC’s new San Francisco office before deciding to leave.
Their exits come as Narvekar has told members of HMC’s board that he plans to retire as early as fall 2027, setting up HMC’s first CEO transition in nearly a decade.
Julie Joncas Named as New FAS CFO
Julie Joncas (MBA ‘00), currently the Chief Financial Officer at Harvard Medical School, has been named the next CFO of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). She will begin on August 24, filling a vacancy left by former FAS CFO, Kofi Ofori, who stepped down in April.
Joncas has served as HMS CFO since 2022, where she oversaw a $900 million annual operating budget and “worked extensively with leadership, counseling in support of institutional priorities, managing through the federal funding crisis, and successfully developing plans to bring cost growth in line with revenue growth.”
HMS ran deficits in nine of ten years between 2008 and 2018. In Fiscal Year (FY) 2022, it reported positive discretionary cash flow for the first time since 2009, but in FY23 and FY24 it still posted operating losses of $28 million and $27 million, respectively. (Discretionary cash flow measures near-term financial flexibility, while HMS’ operating losses reflect structural imbalances between ongoing expenses and reliable revenue.)
ED Secretary McMahon Says Harvard Out of Compliance With SFFA, Discusses Federal Concerns About University’s Antisemitism and Research Funding
On a recent New York Post podcast interview, Education Secretary Linda McMahon outlined the federal government’s view of several Harvard-related disputes, including antisemitism, viewpoint diversity, race-conscious admissions, and future federal research funding:
On antisemitism, McMahon said the Department of Justice (DOJ) “is continuing to investigate Harvard” and cited an incident described in Harvard’s 2025 report from its Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias. She said a student was “allowed not to work in partnership” with another student “because that student was Jewish” and viewed as “an oppressor.”
McMahon cited findings from a 2023 Crimson FAS faculty survey that found “only 3% of professors on campus were conservative,” which she said is “certainly not a balanced viewpoint.”
Asked whether Harvard remains out of compliance on race-based admissions following the Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard ruling, McMahon said the DOJ filed suit because “we believe that they are,” while noting Harvard “claim[s] that they’re not” and “took great pains to list all of the steps that they had done to address some of the issues that have been brought up.”
On federal research funding, McMahon said the government doesn’t want to halt university research and that research universities provide an “unbelievable amount” of “good research and invention” for the country, but that Harvard and other universities “need to know that they’re going to have to operate within the confines of the law.”
Yale Reportedly Offers Second DOJ Settlement Proposal Amid Admissions Investigation
Yale has reportedly submitted a second settlement proposal to the federal government after the Department of Justice (DOJ) found in May that its medical school “discriminat[ed] on the basis of race in the incoming classes of 2023, 2024, and 2025” and “continues to intentionally discriminate against applicants based on their race” in violation of the Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) ruling.
The DOJ says its statistical analysis of applicant-level data produced by Yale showed “virtually no difference” in Yale’s admissions patterns before and after SFFA. Across the 2023, 2024, and 2025, entering classes, admitted Black and Hispanic students had lower median MCAT scores (in the 94th to 96th percentiles) than white and Asian students (in the 99th to 100th percentiles).
The New York Times reported that the DOJ’s investigation has since expanded beyond the medical school to include Yale’s undergraduate and law school admissions practices.
Senator Richard Blumenthal (AB ‘87, also a Yale Law School alum) said on Yale’s campus Friday that the government rejected Yale’s first settlement offer, and that a second offer “may still be pending.” He said Yale made both offers “without any demand” from the government, describing the university as “negotiating against itself.”
The talks have prompted pushback from Yale students, faculty, alumni, and administrators. Yale Law School Dean Cristina Rodríguez and some faculty members have reportedly urged Yale not to settle, including Yale’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, who have called on the university to “defend Yale’s legal rights in court rather than negotiating over unproven allegations.”
Brown Releases Generative AI in Teaching & Learning Report Amid Campus AI Cheating Allegation
Brown released a new campus report on Generative AI in Teaching and Learning, calling AI a “significant disruptor” of regular academic operations at Brown and recommending clearer rules for “acceptable and unacceptable uses” while preserving space for “educational innovation.” The report was commissioned by Brown Provost Francis Doyle (who was previously the inaugural dean of Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences) in March 2025 and written by 13 faculty and staff.
The committee recommends near-term baseline rules and AI tools for the community; medium-term faculty and staff training and updates to Brown’s academic codes; and long-term work to “develop a coalition of institutions” to set AI standards, plus add an AI literacy course designation at Brown. It also urges Brown to “de-emphasize punishment,” noting there is “no way to check with 100% accuracy whether GenAI has been employed.”
The report’s release comes amid an AI cheating allegation in a Brown economics course. Professor Roberto Serrano (PhD ‘92) said he moved the course midterm to a take-home exam after the December shooting on Brown’s campus, but then suspected many students used AI after the class average reached 96% — well above the course’s historic in-person midterm range of 65% to 80%. After he changed the final to an in-person exam, 18 students dropped the course, nine remained enrolled but did not take the final, three students received zeros on the exam, and the final exam average fell to 48.6%.
More News
More News at Harvard
Boston Globe: “How a Boston doctor built a following as a ‘loud and unafraid’ voice in the Trump era” — feat. HMS assistant professor Jeremy Faust
The Context Window Podcast: “It's Not AI That Broke the Job Market for New Grads” — feat. David Deming (PhD ‘10), Dean of Harvard College and economics professor at FAS, Harvard Kennedy School, and Harvard Graduate School of Education
The Crimson: “More Than 4,000 Nurses Strike at Harvard-Affliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital”
SEAS: “David C. Parkes receives John McCarthy Award” — feat. SEAS Dean David Parkes
SEAS: “Electrical Engineering becomes Electrical and Computer Engineering at SEAS”
More News Beyond Harvard
UChicago Law School: “UChicago Law Unveils New AI Strategy Statement”
The Atlantic: “The End of Reading Is Here”
Columbia Daily Spectator: “SIPA officially announces undergraduate major, supported by gift from foundation focused on civil discourse, Jewish heritage”
New York Times: “Decline of Ph.D. Admissions Could Imperil a ‘Generation of New Talent’”
Freakonomics: “Can Universities Win Back Our Trust?” — feat. Dartmouth president Sian Beilock
Tuck School of Business (Dartmouth): “Tuck Launches AI Requirement for MBA First-Year Project”
Hot Takes: “Stanford’s new freshman curriculum illustrates exactly what’s wrong with college”
Columbia Daily Spectator: “Columbia to expand Middle East coursework with fall rollout of SIPA undergraduate major, confidential proposals show”
Dartmouth News: “Leadership Changes in Advancement Shape Dartmouth’s Future”
Bloomberg: “Big Take: America’s Grad School Bubble Is Bursting”
Duke Chronicle: “Duke enrolls record transfer class with 6% acceptance rate, targets veterans and humanities students”
Boston Globe: “Gen Z isn’t happy about AI. Even when mom helped invent it” — feat. Jana Amin (AB ‘25)
Wall Street Journal: “High-Earner Families Are Ditching Traditional Schools for Life Skills and AI”
New York Post: “Lawyer for Columbia University’s Jewish students netted $6.4M payday while preying on own clients: lawsuit”
The Atlantic: “What if It’s Not the Phones?”
Chronicle of Higher Education: “The Improbable Warrior”
Wall Street Journal: "The Intifada at MIT" — op-ed by Wall Street Journal columnist Barton Swaim