Profs Spend Off Year on Research

Among the many frustrations that may arise from the contents of the courses of instruction, one strikes immediately—the dreaded closing note “Expected to be offered in 2007-2008.”

For the student, this means that an interesting course must wait another year to be taken. For professors, the note indicates time away from the classroom—but not from work.

“One image of a male professor on sabbatical is a bearded fellow sitting on his deck, puffing his pipe in relaxed contemplation,” said Pierce Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology J. Richard Hackman. “That’s not me.”

His leave thus far has been “devoted almost entirely to completing writing obligations that range from ‘quite late’ to ‘holding up the whole book,’” Hackman wrote in an e-mail.

He will then work on a new book on the designs and leadership of teams in the intelligence community and enroll in a workshop on the dynamics of dissent.

Steven Pinker, Johnstone family professor of psychology, said that this, his fourth professional sabbatical, has had a familiar focus on authorship.

His first two sabbaticals were devoted to the writing of books, but, he wrote, “With the last two I couldn’t get the timing to coincide with book-writing, so I had to struggle writing the books during the semesters and summers.”

His latest work, “The Stuff of Thought,” was completed just last week and is scheduled to be published next year.

The rest of his semester will go towards the preparation of journal articles and a grant proposal for the topics explored in his book.

Bass Professor of Government Michael J. Sandel will also spend a good portion of his sabbatical at the keyboard.

Sandel will pen two books—one related to the themes presented in his course on ethics and biotechnology, which he taught with Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences Douglas Melton, and another on markets and morals.

“The book tries to argue for the moral limits of markets in certain spheres of life,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Examples range from organs for transplantation to mercenary armies to for-profit prisons, schools, and hospitals.”

Sandel plans to incorporate those themes into a new course he will be instructing upon his return.

Williams, Jr. Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures Doris Sommer will be dedicating much of her time to Cultural Agents, an interfaculty initiative at Harvard that explores the use of art as a social resource.

“The point of...the interfaculty initiative is that art contributes to society because it explores ideas and practices,” wrote Sommer in an e-mail.

“Change,” she said, “depends on innovation and ways to refresh existing material.”

Sommer will also be leading a workshop for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, a federal agency charged with overseeing anti-discrimination law.

She hopes to develop a similar program at the College.

—Staff writer Nicholas A. Ciani can be reached at nciani@fas.harvard.edu.