Professors Are History

The loss of 18 history professors to sabbatical for all or part of the 2002-3 academic year threatens to damage the educational experience of undergraduates, both inside and outside the department. This shortage is especially acute in American history—the most popular specialty within the department—which stands to lose seven of its faculty. Undergraduates depend on the availability of faculty as both advisors and instructors, and only by reforming its sabbatical policy can the University avoid repeating this mistake.

Thesis writers in history will be most affected by the loss, as next year’s juniors and seniors must scramble to compete for an advisor from a much-reduced pool. Although the department has promised that it will import visiting professors, concentrators cannot count on professors who may only be at Harvard for one or two semesters to advise their work. Moreover, the dearth of advisors for history concentrators will have a trickle-down effect on students in related concentrations. Thesis writers in history and literature and history and science will feel pressured to choose their topics knowing that an overburdened history department may not have enough resources to advise them.

But the effect of those vacancies extends far beyond concentrators in fields closely related to history. The history department is responsible for staffing two areas of the core, and history courses are required of many humanities and social sciences concentrators. Although visiting professors may be able to prevent the number of course offerings from slipping significantly, students will hesitate to enroll in classes where they are unfamiliar with the professor and cannot rely on the CUE guide or word-of-mouth recommendations. In addition, students will miss out on opportunities to take classes from some of Harvard’s most renowned scholars, including College Professor William E. Gienapp, who teaches a popular course on baseball in American society, and Professor James T. Kloppenberg, who specializes in intellectual history.

Department chair and Coolidge Professor David Blackbourn says he blames the exodus on a hiring spurt of junior faculty over the past few years, who customarily take sabbaticals after their third year at Harvard. But if the department knew that its new hires would all go on sabbatical in three years, it should have planned accordingly by spreading out the hires and hiring more junior faculty to pick up the slack next year. Although there’s little time left to recruit for next year, it should do what it can to fill out its roster. To alleviate the shortage in the short-term, all of the University’s undergraduates would be indebted to any of the 18 who would consider postponing their leaves.

In the long term, it is essential that the University reform its policy on sabbaticals to prevent such shortages from handicapping departments in the future. Each department should be required to have a minimum number of active professors on campus to teach undergraduates and advise undergraduate theses. That number would vary by department and should be calculated based upon the number of course offerings the department maintains and the number of students it serves, both within the department and in related departments. To ensure that the departments can meet those minimum requirements, future contracts with professors should grant departments some leeway to postpone leave requests. Although professors will not appreciate such a limitation, we expect that departments would only postpone sabbaticals when absolutely necessary—and never postpone those requested on medical or family grounds. This relatively minor demand should not deter scholars from working at a University of this caliber.

Of course, sabbaticals serve an important function in any University. They allow professors to pursue time-and labor-intensive projects, to work with colleagues in universities across the world and, sometimes, simply to revitalize themselves after years of service. While professors have a duty to pass on their knowledge to undergraduates, at a research university they are also expected to create original scholarship and publish prodigiously. These duties need not be mutually exclusive, and with proper planning, departments should be able to accommodate both professors and students.