Departmental Lacunae

Twelve members of the English Department will be absent for all or part of next year. The loss to the Department appears temporary since nine of these men will be coming back, but the mass exodus has more permanent effects for English majors who will be Seniors next year.

There will inevitably be situations in which professors decide to leave Harvard on short notice to take advantage of grants and appointments, but the bulk of absences, next year, will be the result of sabbaticals and leaves of absence falling due simultaneously for a large number of professors. The lack of planning coordination within the English Department has been increased by the two-year rotation of chairmen. It should be the duty of the chairman of the department to see that sabbaticals are spread evenly over the years and to avoid creating professorial gaps in any one area.

And the English Department has not been the first to suffer absentee casualties; last year a number of Government concentrators felt that it had been unwise to schedule sabbaticals for Professors Kissinger, Hoffmann, and Bowie during the same year. What seems to be lacking is coordination between the departmental chairman and his staff. A tentative schedule of sabbaticals and leaves of absence could be drawn up to prevent gaps in the curriculum, while changes of plans could be worked out among Faculty members.

If this proves too restrictive for Harvard's "Great Men," the most elemental function that the chairman could fulfill would be to relay projected plans of absence to the students instead of surprising them at the beginning of each academic year. The system of bracketing courses in the catalogue is blatantly inadequate because it becomes dated soon after publication. The students deserve up-to-date notice of professorial plans.