Gov Dep't Exodus Continues as Schickler Departs

Eric Schickler, the Government Department’s director of undergraduate studies, will be departing Harvard for the University of California, Berkeley, exacerbating the problem of the already dwindling numbers in the department’s American politics faculty.

Schickler, who will leave for the school where he launched his teaching career almost ten years ago, is only one in a series of American politics professors who have left or are planning to leave Harvard.

Schickler arrived at Harvard in 2003 from the department of political science at Berkeley, where he began teaching in 1997.

“My family and I decided that was a place we wanted to be,” he said. “Berkeley made a really terrific offer.”

Other American politics professors have also left for home territory. Professors of Government Mark Hansen and Michael C. Dawson returned to the University of Chicago in 2002 and 2004, respectively. Last year, the Government department also bid farewell to Assistant Professor of Government Andrea L. Campbell ’88, who is now Associate Professor of Political Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Schickler’s departure is not the only loss the Government department will face in the near future. Associate Professor of Government Barry C. Burden, Lecturer on Government Terri Bimes, and Associate Professor of Government William Howell are also planning to leave, Burden said.

This outflow of American politics professors is a problem that has plagued the Government department for years.

The Crimson reported in 1999 that students were struggling to find classes on American politics due to professors on leave and a lack of tenured faculty in the area.

The situation has not improved. Today, American politics still lacks a core community of faculty members.

“In American politics we need a critical mass of both young senior people and young junior people who will be able to work together,” Department Chair Nancy L. Rosenblum ’69 said.

“Dan Carpenter is the informal leader of the sub-field, and he is the only person who is not leaving,” Burden said.

Rosenblum explained that while junior faculty often leave after being denied tenure, Harvard has difficulty retaining its American politics senior faculty for different reasons.

“We often have high teaching loads,” Rosenblum said. “There are not allowances for people to lighten their teaching load.”

The teaching requirement is a benefit for Harvard students, Rosenblum said, but as a result, Harvard professors have more teaching responsibilities and less time to devote to research.

For example, “at Stanford they will teach a fraction of what they teach here,” Rosenblum said.

Schickler said Harvard has a problem attracting new American politics faculty because of competition from peer institutions. The Government department has “relied a lot on hiring senior people away from other institutions,” he said.

“I think that’s an increasingly hard way to go because...people who have been at a place for a long time have developed a connection,” he added.

Not only is it difficult to hire new faculty, current faculty members have also been snatched away.

“Several good places have been aggressively hiring in American politics,” he said. “That’s just made it hard to hold onto people.”

Tenure is the main factor contributing to the loss of junior faculty, Assistant DUS Bear Braumoeller said.

“In recent years a lot of the junior faculty have left before they have come up for tenure,” he said. “It’s a combination of two things—they get tenure offers elsewhere and there is a widespread perception that tenure is difficult to obtain at Harvard.”

Burden said he is leaving Harvard for this reason.

“I was denied tenure so I had no choice but to go at some point,” said Burden. “That has been a very consistent pattern in the department, especially in American politics.”

Schickler said he will be glad to return to his home institution.

“I had been very happy at Berkeley,” Schickler said. “It was a difficult decision to leave there.”

Schickler said he is unsure who will fill the role of DUS when he leaves.

—Staff writer Emily J. Nelson can be reached at ejnelson@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Lulu Zhou can be reached at luluzhou@fas.harvard.edu.