Dean Kirby's Out

Dean William Kirby, who heads Harvard's largest academic unit, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (Harvard College, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the Extension School) is stepping down. Marcella Bombardieri of the Boston Globe reports the news and a lot of speculation.

There's a silver lining for Kirby, though: He'll become the director of the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research. He is a Chinese historian, and this is, in my opinion, a great opportunity to leave behind Harvard's administrative maelstrom and get re-involved in Chinese studies.