Faculty establish language pilot, continue grading debate in May Faculty Meeting ahead of vote

Faculty discussed at length proposed changes to the undergraduate grading policy for a final time at Tuesday’s Meeting of the Faculty, a week before voting begins.

When the emailed ballot opens on May 12, faculty will have seven days to weigh in on three separate questions related to grading reform efforts: capping A grades to 20 percent plus four of students in a class; using an internal “average percentile rank” metric to determine honors and awards; and a satisfactory-plus option for instructors who opt out of letter grading. Any new policy adopted — voting results will be announced May 20 — will go into effect at the beginning of the 2027-28 academic year and will be reviewed after three years.

Said Alisha Holland, Gates Professor of Developing Societies in the Department of Government and a member of the Undergraduate Education Policy Committee’s Subcommittee on Grading: “We have a faculty proposal that has learned from other experiences and been debated, amended, and refined through months of genuine campus deliberation. The proposal needs to keep evolving — that’s what next year’s implementation work and the call for a review after only three years are for. But for once, the question isn’t whether Harvard is going to follow someone else’s lead. The question is whether we’re going to take our own.”

Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Hopi Hoekstra again moved the meeting from the Faculty Room in University Hall to the Science Center to accommodate the large number of faculty engaged in the discussion of the grading proposal. She opened with gratitude for her colleagues’ work across the FAS and the University in a challenging financial time.

“With the benefit of the expertise, experience, and commitment of many, many colleagues, we are making steady progress. And are beginning to see the early results of our efforts,” she noted.

Hoekstra also said Ph.D. admissions are “now on track to increase next year,” and a recent fundraising effort to expand graduate student fellowships is three-quarters of the way to meeting its $100 million goal before the end of June. She also cited new efforts to engage the Provost’s office for approval to launch select new faculty searches across the FAS academic divisions and in SEAS.

“This is hard work,” she said. “But the goal is clear: to put FAS on a stronger foundation – one that allows us to plan with confidence, to pursue knowledge with ambition, and to secure our academic mission for the long term.”

Faculty voted in favor of piloting the Shared Language Initiative (SCI), a collaboration with Columbia University that will provide access to instruction in Less Commonly Taught Languages that could include Uyghur, Chaghatay, Twi, Igbo, Amharic, Punjabi, Finnish or Dutch. The initiative, lauded by Dean of Arts and Humanities Sean Kelly and Mark C. Elliott, Mark Schwartz Professor of Chinese and Inner Asian History and Vice Provost for International Affairs, will launch July 1 and be reviewed in two years.

Annette Gordon-Reed, Carl M. Loeb University Professor, presented a Research Minute on her groundbreaking research on Thomas Jefferson. The 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family,” who also serves on the Harvard Law School faculty, reflected on the decades-long fascination with the complicated character of the author of the Declaration of Independence who kept hundreds of slaves, whom she first learned about in third grade. Her latest book, “Jefferson on Race: A Reader,” published last month.

“Annette’s work brings history and law into conversation, offering new ways to understand familiar figures and events, and pressing us to look more closely at the principles and contradictions at our nation’s start,” said Hoekstra. “Her scholarship has reshaped how we understand early America, including the people and perspectives too often left out of the story.

“Her work reminds us that the past is not just something we inherit — it’s something we interpret,” she added.

Earlier in the meeting, Memorial Minutes were read for three faculty. The life of the late Akira Iriye, Charles Warren Professor of American History, Emeritus, was read by Erez Manela, Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History. The life of Martin Karplus, Theodore William Richards Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, was presented by Xiaowei Zhuang, David B. Arnold, Jr., Professor of Science. And Dennis Frank Thompson, Alfred North Whitehead Professor of Political Philosophy, was read by Eric Beerbohm, Alfred and Rebecca Lin Professor of Government.