Banfield Quits Harvard, Takes Position at Penn

Edward C. Banfield, the author of The Unheavenly City and Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government has resigned to become a University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania starting next fall.

In a letter to Dean Dunlop November 19th. Banfield wrote he had "decided to leave not because of any grievance or complaints. The simple fact is that Pennsylvania has offered me conditions, including a lighter teaching load, which I feel sure will enable me to do more and better work on the subjects which interest me."

Wilson Rakes Leaves

"I was raking leaves in the back yard when Banfield called, November 20," James Q. Wilson, Government Department chairman, said last night. "He told me he was resigning. After I picked myself up off the floor, I asked him if we could discuss it. He said he wanted to make his own decision."

In 1955, Banfield co-authored a book entitled Politics, Planning and the Public interest with Martin Myerson, the current president of the University of Pennsylvania. However, Wilson said, "I asked Banfield if that had anything to do with it. He said that Myerson being president of Pennsylvania was not the decisive factor."

Although Banfield will receive a higher salary at Pennsylvania. Wilson said that pay was not the decisive factor. Wilson attributed the move to "a lighter teaching load and more money for secretarial help, research, and travel." Banfield will be free of allegiance to any one department at Penn and will teach only as much as he wants, Wilson added.

"Everybody, including those who disagree with him, feel this is a serious loss." Wilson said, "He was a scholar's scholar. He was relentlessly concerned with intellectual pursuits. There is no way he could be replaced by anybody."

Banfield is currently on sabbatical in North Africa.