Two Professors Granted Rare Internal Tenures

Two scholars, Andrew M. Moravcsik and A. Iain Johnston, have both received rare internal tenures in the government department.

The decisions come just one year after two assistant professors in the Government Department--Bonnie Honig and Peter Berkowitz--were denied tenure in highly-publicized cases.

Honig's case sparked a letter-writing campaign from other scholars in the Faculty, while Berkowitz appealed the decision with the help of prominent law school Professor Charles R. Nesson.

However, Government Department administrators say the most recent appointments are not part of any change in policy.

"It's important to give all junior scholars here a fair shot at promotion to full professor...even though we do not have a tenure track system, but the aim of all searches is to find the best scholars to teach our undergraduate and graduate students," Government Department Chair Roderick MacFarquhar wrote in an e-mail message.

Buttenwieser University Professor Stanley H. Hoffmann agreed that "we have a brilliant junior faculty, and when such nation-wide searches put them on top, it would be unfair and stupid not to give them tenure."

Hoffman also pointed out that "the government department has also recently been joined by excellent people from other universities--Jeff Frieden from UCLA and Liz Perry from Michigan, for example. So we have the best of both worlds, talent from inside Harvard and the rest of the country."

Before this year, Professor of Government Grzegorz Ekiert was the most recent professor to receive an internal tenure promotion in the government department. Ekiert was promoted two years ago.

The Government Department has suffered the loss of several scholars in recent years, including the departure of former senior faculty member Morris P. Fiorina, who left his post as Thomson professor of government to take a tenured position at Stanford last year.

However, MacFarquhar said the two most recent promotions were not simply an effort to fill these vacated spots.

"Johnston and Moravcsik had reached the point at which tenure review normally takes place and that was why we reviewed them," he said.

Moravcsik specializes in European integration, while Johnston's area of expertise is East Asian foreign policy with a focus on China.

Moravcsik said that he "would like to help the department to teach students to impose more rigor on the use of historical methods in political science."

Moravcsik is currently spending the semester in New York City, mostly at NYU and Columbia, working on his research on the origins of international human rights regimes. In the past, he has taught at least one junior seminar each year.

Every other year, the course has been on the European Union and next semester the subject will be international human rights.

He has also co-taught Historical Study A-12, "International Conflicts and Cooperation in the Modern World" with Kaneb Professor of National Security and Military Stephen P. Rosen.

Rosen praised Moravcsik's expertise and teaching style.

"[Moravcsik] as a teacher is able to present extremely sophisticated theories and analyses to students in an introductory course in a way that makes those ideas exciting and accessible to the students. This is a rare gift," he says.

Jonathan Crystal, who worked with Moravcsik on both his senior thesis and doctoral thesis, also testified to his former adviser's pedagogical ability.

"He takes teaching very seriously. For example, he was very determined to raise his overall rankings in the CUE Guide. He is one of the few professors that is both brilliant and accessible," he says.

Crystal, who is now a professor at Fordham University also served as a TF in one of Moravcsik's classes.

"Some students were a little intimidated by him because he is very direct," Crystal says. However, Crystal sees this directness as a sign that Moravscik respects the students--he engages the students in intellectual discussion as he would with a colleague.

Saadia M. Pekkanen, who received a doctorate from Harvard in 1992 and was also a TF for Moravcsik, agreed that he makes himself very available to the students. "He encouraged interaction both in and out of the classroom," she says.

Moravcsik has had a very diverse and eclectic career. Before going to graduate school, he worked as a trade negotiator, a German translator, a classical music critic and a business consultant, among other things.

This diversity extends to Moravcsik's scholarly research. Some of the topics he has written on include foreign development aid, liberal political theory, Japanese views of world politics and the foreign policies of Woodrow Wilson and Charles de Gaulle.

"Like most of my colleagues, I have lots of stories about fascinating people and events. But the deepest satisfactions of scholarship are often solitary, or shared only with a few. For me, they stem mostly from empirical research," Moravcsik says.

"I find great satisfaction in bringing just a little more order to the almost intractably complex and ironic flow of human history."

MacFarquhar praised Moravcsik's research. "His most recent book was a path-breaking study...He is a first-rate and prolific scholar on Western Europe and acknowledged to be the leader in his field both in the US and Western Europe."

Johnston, who is working this year at Stanford University, is also widely considered to be at the top of his field.

"Iain Johnston is unquestionably the leading specialist to combine enormous expertise on Chinese foreign relations with a superb knowledge of international relations theory," he says.

Rosovsky Professor of Government Elizabeth Perry says she believes Johnston, who is currently on leave teaching at Stanford, will bring unique and important skills to the government department.

"There are very few theorists of Chinese international relations who also have a strong grounding in the methods of social science," she says. Perry is also the director of the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research.

Johnston is the author of one book and numerous articles and papers on Chinese international relations. At Stanford, he is working on his second book, which will test models of socialization in Chinese arms control and international environment policies.

He was appointed to an associate professorship at Harvard in 1996 and has taught several courses here on Chinese foreign policy, nuclear learning and international relations.

Johnston received a MacArthur Fellowship in international peace and security in 1991 and is a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations, among other committees.

Perry said that "Johnston's serious devotion to teaching and exemplary teaching record will continue to be invaluable assets to his students."

MacFarquhar agreed that Johnston has clearly shown over the last several years that he is "a first-class undergraduate and graduate teacher...and that is very important to the department."

Johnston could not be reached for comment for this article.

Rosen is confident that "with Moravcsik and Johnston, the government department has people who will guarantee the intellectual strength of the department for years to come."