Joint Appointments for Biochemists

Harvard is finally considering the creation of a much-needed Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, but the proposal passed by the Committee on Educational Policy may be too weak to be meaningful.

Biochemistry deserves more attention than it has been receiving at Harvard. It is the scientific frontier of the sixties--involving research in genetic codes, cancer, and the workings of the brain. If Harvard is to remain a leader in experimental science, it must build up its program of instruction in biochemistry and add more biochemists to the Faculty.

The principal reason Harvard biochemists offer for a separate department is the difficulty they now have getting biochemists appointed to tenured faculty positions. A biochemist must be approved either by the Chemistry faculty or the Biology faculty, before the Corporation considers his appointment. Although no one wants to talk about specific cases, the result is clear: too few biochemists are receiving tenure.

The new scheme, however, with its "joint appointments," does not solve the problem. A candidate for tenure in the proposed department would have to be approved both by the biochemistry faculty and the faculty of either Biology or Chemistry. Even if the biochemists appreciate a certain candidate's value, he could still be rejected by the other department, just as before.

The joint-appointment scheme represents an attempt to maintain a liason with established departments. Biochemists will, after all, be using laboratory facilities of the Biology and Chemistry Department. It may also have seemed politic to compromise with critics who fear that the Biology and Chemistry Department will lose some of their best men and will suffer for it. In any case, the resulting department does not appear much stronger than the existing Biochemistry committee.

The faculty should scrap the joint-appointment plan, and put Biochemistry on an equal footing with the other sciences.