Visiting Professors Admire Harvard Community Diversity

Each year international educators arrive at Harvard to serve as visiting professors and yesterday several of them agreed that Harvard's drawing power lies in the diversity of its intellectual community and the many activities available here.

"The best thing about being a visiting professor is the change it affords me," Shaul Shaked, visiting professor of Iranian; said yesterday.

This is Shaked's second visit to the United States as a visiting professor from The Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Five years ago he lectured at the University of California at Berkeley.

Jarava Lal Mehta, visiting professor at the Center for the Study of World Religions, first came to Harvard in 1968 from Banaras Hindu University in India. He taught here for one year and then went to the University of Hawaii.

From 1970 to 1972 Mehta often commuted from Cambridge to Hawaii, and in 1972 he left his post at the University of Hawaii because he found the atmosphere at Harvard "more challenging."

Dimitri Hadzi, visiting lecturer on Visual and Environmental Studies, said yesterday "my experience with Harvard has been a very positive one," explaining that the talent and intellectual energy at Harvard are very stimulating.

Originally from New York, Hadzi lived in Italy for 24 years after spending several years in Greece. This is his first teaching experience.

Natalie Rogoff Ramsoy, visiting professor of Sociology from the University of Oslo, said yesterday because students start specializing right away in Norway they do not have as broad a variety of interests as Harvard students do.

Ramsoy, who works for the Institute of Applied Social Research at the University of Oslo, said she is enjoying herself very much, but is looking forward to going back to where the air is clean.