Send an e-mail to Porter University Professor of English Helen Vendler, and it will bounce right back to you.

“Helen Vendler does not use e-mail,” the automated response reads, and offers a mailing address.

Vendler isn’t alone. Professor of English Elaine Scarry’s account spits out her office address to would-be e-correspondents. And the online faculty profile for Goelet Professor of Medieval History Michael McCormick includes no e-mail address—the space where it should be just says “Restricted.”

At a time when electronic communication is fast replacing phone calls, faxes, and even personal contact, many of the University’s most prominent professors decline to give out their addresses to students—or spurn e-mail completely.

“It’s a form of technology I know next to nothing about,” said Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Peter J. Gomes. “I’m a Neanderthal.”

Gomes, also the Pusey Minister at Memorial Church, said he believes he’s “a good deal more accessible than most of my colleagues” even though he does not use an e-mail account.

Instead, Gomes makes himself available to students every week at his home.

“I get a lot of business done at tea every Wednesday,” Gomes said, adding that he also meets with students at the end of his lectures and at Memorial Church. Students can reach his teaching fellows via e-mail if they need a more immediate response, he said.

Gomes said that he has “never felt deprived” by his lack of e-mail contact.

“I have no desire for instantaneous communication,” he said. “If you write me a letter, I’ll answer it. If you telephone me, I’ll return the call. [E-mail] was a technological innovation I did not see the need of adopting.”

“It’s how you organize your time and what you think is important, I suppose,” he said later.

Gomes said he recently discovered that an e-mail address for him exists, as the University assigns an account to every professor—another reason not to start now.

“If I open this thing up now, there will be a million messages in there,” he said.

Orchard Professor in the History of Landscape John R. Stilgoe doesn’t use his Harvard address either, but for security reasons. Because e-mails travel through Harvard’s local area network (LAN), messages could end up in the hands of someone other than the intended recipient, Stilgoe said, pointing out that even intended recipients can forward messages to a third-party without permission.

“Outside of a couple of students in applied math, I have yet to meet a Harvard undergraduate who knows how [Harvard’s e-mail system] works,” Stilgoe said.

“I honestly don’t get your generation,” he added later.

Stilgoe said that undergraduates are uninformed about the potential security risks of using e-mail, and that he is amazed students will send out Harvard ID numbers, social security numbers, and other personal details in messages.

“You will attach to an e-mail your resume and merrily ship it off,” Stilgoe said. Stilgoe said his Harvard e-mail address was created “without my asking,” and he “had to move mountains” to activate an autoresponder.

“I didn’t even know I had [the address],” Stilgoe said. “But I can’t get rid of it.”

“What [Stilgoe] always says is ‘you’re not paying for me to e-mail you,’” said Jonathan C. Bardin ’06-’07, one of Stilgoe’s students. Bardin said Stilgoe typically shows up to class early, and that half an hour before class starts, between 10 and 30 students will be there as well.

“E-mail is convenient and can be an effective way of arranging meetings, but it cannot supplant face-to-face contact between students and staff,” Casey N. Cep, a past and current student of Vendler, wrote in an e-mail. “I have had wonderful interactions with Professor Vendler during her office hours—meetings that were no less enjoyable for having been arranged without e-mail.”

Stephanie E. L. Bengtsson ’05, who takes a course taught by Scarry, said the English professor has her own system and is “fairly easy to find.”

Scarry’s lack of e-mail use “really hasn’t hampered me at all,” Bengtsson said. “I look at it more as an interesting kind of quirk than any major issue.”