Sheila S. Jasanoff '64, Professor at Harvard Kennedy School

When Sheila S. Jasanoff ’64 entered Radcliffe College in 1960, she defied the image of a typical “Radcliffe girl.”

For one, she was over two years younger than most of the other freshmen, after being placed ahead of her age’s grade level when her family moved from Mumbai to suburban New York four years earlier. Jasanoff concentrated in mathematics, which was a choice Amy M. Cohen-Corwin ’64, her college friend and fellow mathematics concentrator, described as “extremely uncommon” for students at Radcliffe.

By Courtesy of Sheila Jasanoff

She was also one of the few South Asian students on campus at the time. “Most of the people we met had never met an Indian before,” Jasanoff recalled. “It was not a particularly diverse student body at the time.”

These atypical traits and choices during her time at Radcliffe foreshadowed her varied and trailblazing academic career.

After concentrating in mathematics as an undergraduate, Jasanoff completed her M.A. and Ph.D. in linguistics. She then received a J.D. from Harvard Law School, after which she focused on environmental law. Then, Jasanoff settled into her present field of Science and Technology Studies, which she helped pioneer. In 1998, she returned to Harvard, a place Jasanoff said she and her family have always been particularly attached to. She is currently a professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Although Jasanoff said that her career trajectory has been propelled by the “accidental convergence” of opportunities, her friends and family credit her personal and professional success to her kind, pragmatic personality and her creative, adaptive mind.

MAKING AN IMPRESSION

While at Radcliffe, Jasanoff made a strong impression. Edith D. Sylla ’63, who Jasanoff said was her closest friend in college, recalled that Jasanoff was very thoughtful, practical, and talented.

Though Jasanoff described Radcliffe as an “intimidating experience,” Sylla said, “I didn’t perceive Sheila as being more insecure than other people. I would have said she was very grounded.”

By Bridget R Irvine

Once, at a conference in 1985, Jasanoff was approached by a stranger who told her that his sister-in-law had attended Radcliffe with her; he asked if she knew how impressive she had appeared in college.

“I thought to myself, ‘Ridiculous!’” Jasanoff said. “I was going around thinking how impressive everybody else was.”

A CAREER OF CHANGE

According to Jasanoff, her father, who worked for the UN, intended for her to return to India after she completed her education. Those original plans changed when Jasanoff was completing her M.A. at the University of Bonn in what was then West Germany.

While in West Germany, she changed her field of study to linguistics, a decision that she said led to her father cutting her off. It was also in Bonn that she met her future husband Jay H. Jasanoff ’63, a professor of linguistics at Harvard. Though their college years had overlapped, the two had not met at Harvard.

Jasanoff returned to Harvard twice afterwards, first for a Ph.D. in linguistics from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and then for a J.D. from the Law School.

“Harvard is woven into the fabric of our family in a very engaging way,” Jasanoff said. “This the place where [my husband and I] both grew up, got married, had kids.” Jasanoff’s husband and daughter are both professors at the College, and many members of her immediate family attended the College.

She added that asking why she chose to return to Harvard several times is akin to asking, “Why did you decide to come home?”

Jasanoff practiced environmental law in Boston from 1976 to 1978 until she and Jay Jasanoff accepted job offers at Cornell University.

PIONEERING A FIELD

She said that it was at Cornell that her career in Science and Technology Studies began. STS is an interdisciplinary field that explores how scientific discoveries and technological advances impact social structures like law, public policy, and ethics.

“Back then, the field didn’t exist. The field gradually came into being in the 70s and onwards, and it didn’t crystallize until the 80s and 90s,” Sheila Jasanoff said. “It was a cluster of researchers who had interests in this field, but they weren’t trained in it.”

As the founding chair of the STS department at Cornell, Jasanoff greatly contributed to the establishment of the field. The field of STS has blossomed since its founding, with popular programs at schools like Cornell, MIT, and Stanford. Since 2002, Jasanoff has taught and conducted research in the STS program at the Kennedy School.

Jasanoff’s daughter Maya R. Jasanoff ‘96, a history professor at Harvard, called her mother a “very creative and field-defining scholar.”

“I have learned from her how to look above and beyond the established conventional categories that academia might be cut into,” Maya Jasanoff said. “She thinks very creatively about how to link ideas together.”

Cohen-Corwin said she was unsurprised by Jasanoff’s career path.

“I’m never surprised by the careers bright, serious people develop,” Cohen-Corwin said, recalling their diverse conversation topics and what she described as Jasanoff’s “great balance” between being both engaged and rational about the issues of the day.

—Staff writer Quynh-Nhu Le can be reached at quynhnhu.le@thecrimson.com.