Star Gazing: Skip Dersh And Spike

Harvard's brightest stars--its well-respected and well-treated faculty members--keep the Harvard name in the national spotlight. Their names appear in newspaper articles, their faces on television, their opinions in the magazines of the country's intelligentsia.

Naturally, undergraduates eager to learn from the best and the brightest regularly pack the largest auditoriums for faculty luminaries courses. But the edge of the podium is the closest some of these professors ever get to undergraduates. And from the student's vantage point--the back of a crowded lecture hall--Harvard's biggest personalities tend to look pretty small.

Among the best-known Harvard names is Baker Professor of Economic Martin S. Feldstein '61, who was a close runner-up in the search for a Harvard president. During Ronald Reagan's first term. Feldstein chaired the Council of Economic Advisers. Now, he indoctrinates undergraduates with his conservative spin on the dismal science in "Ec 10," the introductory economics class that is usually the largest course at Harvard.

Always approaching Ec 10 in size is Historical Study A-12, taught by a former member of the Carter administration. Dillon Professor of International Affairs Joseph S. Nye Jr., who also directs the Center fore International Affairs, was Carter's deputy undersecretary of state.

Redeveloping countries in Eastern Europe are seeing more of some Harvard professors than anyone in Cambridge. Perennial globetrotter Jeffrey D. Sachs, professor of economics, often lends his help overseas. Professor of Government Michael J. Sandel is another of the many Harvard professors and affiliates who have advised former Soviet republics in recent months.

In the News

Perennial faces in the news includes outspoken professor of Law Alan M. Dershowitz, the author of Chutzpah who recently made headlines for leading Mike Tyson's appeal. Ron Silver played Dershowitz in Reversal of Fortune, a film based on Dersh's defense of Rhode Island aristocrat Claus von Bulow.

Tyler Professor of Constitutional Law Lawrence H. Tribe '62 seems to get more and more of the national spotlight. Earlier this summer, the Supreme Court ruled in Tribe's favor a case he had argued before the high court. The ruling leaves tobacco companies more vulnerable to lawsuits from smokers.

Bringing Harvard once-beleaguered Department of Afro-American Studies into a new era is DuBois Professor of the Humanities Henry Louis Gates Jr., who had been at Duke University for only one year when Harvard grabbed him. Bitter Duke students joked that Gates got his nickname, "Skip" because he jumped so frequently from job to job.

Gates used his pull last year to bring in Harvard's most famous visiting faculty members, filmmakers Spike Lee, Who taught his first lecture to a packed Sanders Theater. Lee is likely to return this year to teach another, smaller course on Afro-American film.

Although he sometimes teaches a seminar for first year, Professor of Psychology and Medical Humanities Robert Coles is best known on campus for his huge elective, General Education 105. Sometimes called "Guilt" the course explores the pitiful lives of American Writers and is a famous gut.

Coles is one of many Harvard professors who regularly writes for national magazines. Professor of English Robert. Brustein, the founder and director of the American Repertory Theater who teaches lecture courses on dramatic writing, often appears in The New Republic.

Professor of English Marjorie Garber, a Shakespeare expert and cultural critic, is a frequent contributor to The New York Times. Porter University Professor Helen H. Vendler, an unparalleled expert on poetry, writes for the New Yorker and other publications.

Harvard is full of experts, in fact--including the world's leading authority on ants, Baird Professor of Science E.O. Wilson. Wilson recently received his second Pulitzer Prize for The Ants, a gigantic volume that served as a basis for the computer game SimAnt. His popular Core course, "Evolutionary Biology," Contains a large unit on ant social behavior.

Disagreeing with Wilson on just about everything having to do with heredity versus environment is Stephen Jay Gould Agassiz professor of zoology. Gould, another Harvard science hotshot, often teaches a Core science course of his own.

Harvard has more than 30 Nobel laureates, many of whom still teach here. They include Baird Professor of Science Dudley R. Herschbach, Emery Professor of Organic Chemistry Elias J. Corey, Higgins professor of Physics Sheldon L. Glashow and Loeb University Professor Walter Gilbert.

To be granted life-time positions at Harvard, professors generally need to be the best in their fields--and that often means they are swiped from other universities. Junior professors are told upon arrival here that they will likely leave the University. Rarely is an associate professor given tenure after seven years in the lower ranks--although some leave Harvard only to return when they acheive more notoriety.

Undergraduates often complain that Harvard loses some of the best teachers in the faculty members in favor bigger names. Some of the professors who play the biggest roles in students' lives are considered too small to fill the gaping shoes of a tenured Harvard luminary.