When professors voted that they lack confidence in the leadership of University President Lawrence H. Summers at the March 15 meeting of the Faculty, the unexpected development was splashed across the front pages of the nation’s newspapers.

But it may be that another meeting, at the time unbeknownst to the press and most members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), will have even greater implications for the future of the University.

On the morning of Thursday, Feb. 24, 15 FAS department chairs gathered in the Burr Hall wing of the Barker Center to discuss the crisis touched off at a Faculty meeting nine days earlier.

Since the inaugural meeting in Barker 133, the chairs have met every Thursday morning, without the presence of either Summers or Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby, to discuss their concerns with the governance of FAS and the University as a whole.

The initial group of 15 has expanded so that virtually every department or degree-granting chair has been personally invited to the meetings. To date, over three dozen current and incoming chairs—most from the humanities and social sciences, and many of whom have been vocal critics of Summers—have attended the meetings, which are unprecedented in the history of FAS, according to organizers.

Several supporters of Summers have also attended the meetings, which organizers say are open to all FAS degree-granting chairs.

The meetings represent not only a lack of confidence in Summers’ leadership, but also a frustration with the traditional venues for discussing concerns. These channels of communication include monthly Faculty meetings, which are chaired by Summers, and bi-weekly meetings of the Faculty Council, the 18-member FAS governing body, which are chaired by Kirby.

The group has taken its concerns straight to the top, meeting with members of the Corporation—the University’s highest governing board—on April 24.

The meetings are part of a broad movement within the Faculty, voiced most forcefully in the no confidence vote, to reclaim control of FAS.

The struggle for power amounts to a territorial dispute over three major areas of University governance—the ongoing Harvard College Curricular Review, the process of tenure appointments, and administrative control over the allocation of financial resources, including Allston planning.

As with the Faculty at large, the collection of department chairs is not monolithic in its prescription for the future of the FAS-Summers relationship, as not all professors share the discontent of the majority of the Faculty with Summers’ leadership. And some professors say that since the March vote, Summers has already begun to temper his aggressive, hands-on approach to FAS management.

But as the collection of chairs continues to meet throughout next year, even as the Faculty returns its attention to the day-to-day affairs of running FAS, it is unlikely that broader leadership concerns will go unaddressed.

And if the tone of many members of the group is any indication, to address those concerns and satisfy the Faculty, Summers will have to do more than change his style of managing FAS—he will have to stop governing it.

“There are people who I think believe that the only way to proceed is to box off the FAS as much as possible from intervention from above of the sorts that occurred,” says Jan Ziolkowski, acting chair of the folklore and mythology department, who has been the driving force behind the chair meetings. “Since we don’t have any say in the matter [of whether a president stays or goes] beyond what the vote itself expressed, what we have to do is ensure that operations that are most important to us are buffered as much as possible from incursion.”

THE MAN IN THE MIDDLE