Strengthening Higher Ed Is Goal of Upcoming Konvitz Lecture

Rakesh Khurana ’89, former dean of Harvard College and scholar of organizational behavior, will discuss why public trust in higher education has declined – and how universities and colleges can respond – when he delivers this year’s Milton R. Konvitz Memorial Lectureship in American Ideals.

“From Institutional Mission to Administrative Means: The Bureaucratization of Universities” will be held at 5 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 17 in 105 Ives Hall. Remote attendance will be available. The public is invited, and registration is required. 

Khurana is the Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development at Harvard Business School and a professor of sociology in the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He is currently studying why higher education is facing public skepticism, and in his view, a decline in institutional legitimacy, asking what has changed and what responses would be effective. 

“At this moment, when universities are facing so much pressure and critique – some of it deserved, but some undeserved – it’s important to understand how we got here, so as we take actions, we end up strengthening the institution rather than permanently weakening it,” Khurana said.

In his lecture, Khurana will argue that bureaucracy can pull educational institutions away from mission-driven work and make them less responsive to public concerns. The lecture will examine how the growth of academic departments and efforts to serve a more diverse student population have each contributed to organizational complexity. He will contend that complexity has created bureaucratic systems that reward managers who handle organizational complexity over leaders who advance institutional core purposes, such as educating students and pursuing knowledge.

“Higher education is part of the scaffolding of society. It plays a critical role in the idea that the truth matters,” Khurana said. “Universities teach us that it’s better to live with an uncomfortable truth than a comfortable delusion. Universities are literally committed to that idea. That’s the mission.”

Khurana believes the dynamics of academic bureaucracies can make a university less responsive to outside feedback, such as criticisms relating to freedom of speech, academic inquiry, meritocratic admissions and student outcomes.

“A strong arrogant culture developed within universities, especially selective ones. They often dismissed criticisms. … [Universities] used to have bipartisan support, but they increasingly came to be seen as no longer necessarily representing broader social values and shared values,” Khurana said.

After obtaining a bachelor’s degree from Cornell’s ILR School, Khurana earned an M.A. in sociology and a Ph.D. in organization behavior, both from Harvard University. He has written several books, including the award-winning “From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession” (2010). 

About the Konvitz Memorial Lectureship

The annual Milton R. Konvitz Memorial Lectureship in American Ideals is named in honor of the late Milton Konvitz, an ILR School founder and professor. Konvitz was a leading scholar of American constitutional and labor law, and civil and human rights. The lectureship brings prominent experts in American democratic thought, ethics and political philosophy to campus.

Konvitz was a professor at both the ILR School and the Cornell Law School from 1946 until his retirement in 1973. More than 8,000 Cornell undergraduates participated in his American Ideals course, which examined the writings and teachings of the great intellectual thinkers and philosophers who shaped America’s democratic values.

The Konvitz Memorial Lecture was founded in 2005 by Irwin Jacobs '54, BEE ’56, and his wife, the late Joan Klein Jacobs '54. Irwin graduated from Cornell with a degree in electrical engineering, while Joan Jacobs graduated from the College of Human Ecology. 

The event is co-sponsored by the Committee on the Future of the American University.