My thoughts on the Harvard mess
Some of you have asked for this. I’ll list a few points that have been in the forefront of my mind, noting they are partly subjective in nature:
1. Harvard is by no means “wrecked.” In 2023, as in every other single year, Harvard along with MIT had the best and most interesting job market papers in economics. That isn’t about to change. I see good evidence that Harvard remains excellent in many other fields as well. Perhaps the humanities are in trouble there, I don’t know enough to speak to that.
2. There is still a lot else wrong about Harvard, especially at the level of undergraduate education and pressures for peer conformity. And academic pressures placed on faculty, and lack of freedom of speech, and inconsistent standards at the administrative level, depending on the particular issues at stake in a disciplinary case. On all those issues, Harvard gets poor marks, much poorer marks than my own George Mason University. That shouldn’t be the case for what is supposed to be “America’s best university.”
3. I don’t usually like to engage in internet pile-ons, especially if the person involved might have some personal or personality problems. So I’ve let that topic sit. In any case, I believe the core issues here are clear, and I haven’t felt I have new insight to add.
5. The point I would like to add, if I may be a bit rude, is that Harvard, upon closer examination, seems to have a quite mediocre governing board. I believe there are a few exceptions on the list of names, but nonetheless I see a lot of evidence for a critical mass of poor decision-makers, many of them also lacking in courage. Furthermore, they are bad at the things they are supposed to be good at.
Just as Harvard has many of the best faculty, and many of the best students, I had expected the school would have a super-distinguished and super-competent board, even if it was a board I might have disagreed with on many key issues. I had never looked at the Harvard board before. So I was naive. But in fact the board of “the Corporation” is a big, big disappointment (WSJ), relative to the rest of the institution. Harvard seems to do best when the relevant decisions are not being made by the governing board. More fundamentally, viewed as a political economy problem, I don’t see which are the institutions or incentives in place to make the board really, really good, as it ought to be. Nope. So this month I learned something big about Harvard.
The first step toward reform and improvement would be for a significant portion of the board to realize — if only to itself — that it is not very good at precisely the matters its members are supposed to be good at. And then make plans to step down, and to have the remainder of the board set up better institutions to govern board membership in the future. I don’t expect that to happen, though there may be a resignation or two over time. In any case, that is my recommendation, noting that procedures for choosing future board members is a “collective choice” problem without a simple answer. Many of the very best boards are great for circular reasons, namely you have great members over time choosing other great members. That is the way to go, when you can.
I believe many people — including insiders — know and agree with what I have written under this point, but I haven’t seen it spelt out as explicitly as it should be. So there you go.