Analysis

questions:

Are the various faculty interest groups-Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology, and the groups in Soc Rel-willing to surrender their proprietary interests in undergraduate education to the new center? The new center could not survive without a substantial instructional budget of its own.

Will these same faculty groups be willing to devote a substantial portion of their time to undergraduate education in the center?

Will the new departmental graduate programs allow teaching fellows sufficient flexibility and diversity to facilitate education in the center?

Whatever the answers to these questions, they will be determined to a great extent within the next two weeks. A working committee on undergraduate education has already been appointed. The Social Relations faculty will receive and act on its report at the department meeting on March 20.

No specific plans have been presented yet to identify and exploit new opportunities for graduate education or for professional research. Certainly, though, there are a number of directions in which upper-level work in the social sciences at Harvard could go.

Which directions are chosen depends mainly, as does undergraduate education, on the ability of specific faculty groups to work together in building new programs even as they move apart, with a new Sociology Department, to pursue their own academic interests.