Ira I. Katznelson Sun, Aug 9, 2020 at 6:15 PM To: Noam M Elcott , Emmanuelle M Saada , "Joanna R. Stalnaker" , david john helfand , "Nicole B. Wallack" , "Elaine R. Sisman" Cc: "Amy E. Hungerford" , "Lee C. Bollinger" , "James J. Valentini" , Ira Katznelson Dear All, With keen appreciation for your pedagogical leadership, I would like to add some thoughts to Amy’s recent message by reflecting directly about a number of relevant matters: First, I want to underscore what seems to have been ill-understood. From the start, Amy has been stalwart in pressing for a fully voluntary faculty policy in multiple venues, including the working group on education and the Council of Deans. Indeed, none of us in senior administration ever entertained the idea that faculty should be compelled to teach in person. Second, across the University, almost every dean has asked their school’s faculty to reflect on fall teaching plans in light of what we all have been learning, week to week, about the pandemic and how the University is mitigating risk. These discussions, which have brought about changes to the proportion of teaching that includes a classroom presence by faculty, have been entirely consistent with a voluntary policy based on respect for faculty judgment. After all, it is reasonable and fair to assume that our colleagues, in choosing how possibly to adjust their initial preferences, would want to hear the considered judgment of relevant academic leaders, would take into account the quite uniform expression of student interest in gaining face to face access to faculty, and would like to understand what the institution, as such, would look like to students (and ourselves) as a result of the sum of individual and group decisions. Third, on the substance of the matter, like Amy I am enormously impressed by the care you have exercised in considering how the Core will be taught in the coming months. If you will allow me, I would like to express skepticism in one respect. We simply do not know, in fact or in practice, which form of instruction will work best. If all our teaching operates in one shared manner, as you have proposed, how will we learn whether Hyflex//hybrid teaching with a strong in-the-classroom component can succeed for courses that depend heavily on discussion? For that reason, my own preference has been to run a comparative experiment: 50-50 or something like that if faculty were willing, or even at the proportion adopted more broadly in Arts and Sciences. Especially as we do not know how long the current health crisis will last, it would be good to gain some empirical experience with different modes of teaching the Core. Fourth, I wish there had been more direct back and forth as judgments about Core teaching were being made. Your richly-considered letter by far is the most detailed, indeed nearly the only, explanation that I, or Amy and Lee, has received. Even though these are extraordinary times, this significant decision, taken at just the moment first and second year undergraduates were being invited back to campus, was made with no process of discussion and consideration beyond your committee and perhaps the Committee on Instruction (but not with the EVP, provost, or president, or, to my knowledge, with the large cohort of colleagues who teach in the Core). There is a lesson here on behalf of a richer network and practice of communication. Sending regards and appreciation, Ira