Why Harvard Gets The Brush-Off

Two weeks ago, David Featherman, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin, picked up the phone and heard Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky at the other end.

It was an important phone call for the dean. In the spring. Harvard's Sociology Department had extended simultaneous offers of tenure to three leading scholars, in an extraordinary effort to revitalize the faculty of the University's most embattled department.

Earlier in the term, one scholar--Edward C. Laumann of the University of Chicago--had told Rosovsky not to put his name in the course catalogue.

Now, as he called Featherman. Rosovsky was, as one observer put it, "roughly in the position of a high school senior without a date the night before the prom, nervously working his way down the class list."

By the time the conversation was over. Featherman had given the dean the brush-off.

He and Laumann are now part of a select group of scholars around the world who have turned down offers of tenure.

Between 1973 and 1980--the last period for which such statistics are available--41 professors gave Harvard thumbs down--a rejection rate of 31 percent.

50 Percent

Counting unsuccessful preliminary feelers. Rosovsky estimated in his annual report for 1979-80 that the Faculty is able to recruit its "real first choice" about half the time.

What compels a professor to turn Harvard down?

Rosovsky went on in his report to list two of the leading factors: unwillingness to uproot a family, especially if a professor's spouse is employed: and the Faculty's policy of considering age and experience alone in determining salaries--not "star" status, which many Harvard candidates can claim at their current institutions.

In addition, the dean wrote, "the Boxton area is expensive, and I am told that reasonable people may be repelled by cold winters and hot summers."

But those are not the first reasons the refuseniks themselves offer in explaining their decisions not to come to Harvard. Laumann and Featherman, for instance, offered almost identical explanations: both thought their current departments were better than Harvard's.

'If I had gone to Harvard, it would have taken a year or two to construct the collegial network and develop the research facilities to put me somewhere close to where I am. "Featherman said in an interview this week.

"I already have everything in hand I could possibly want and then some." Laumann said, explaining his turndown.

The Sociology Department's current plight stems from a Faculty-wide syndrome: the extraordinarily high standards Harvard sets for tenured professors, whose appointments are for life, tends to reduce the field to scholars who are comfortably established where they are.

"When you look for the most distinguished international figure in the field, it's quite likely they will already be happy," says Jeremy Knowles, chairman of the Chemistry Department (which has hit two for two in its most recent tenure offers). "People who do good work are happy."

But other professors cite a problem in the attitude the Faculty takes in recruiting. "Harvard simply assumes you want to go there," says one professor who recently turned Harvard down. "The theory that all their professors are stars--that word was used to me. But that's all bloody nonsense. The assumption is that they are deigning to honor you--that's the tone I got in our negotiations. The whole style of the offer didn't interest me."

The professor, who refused to be identified, adds, "Harvard is gigantically attractive to people who are nearly first rate--it puts the seal of approval on their careers. But if you're at the top, you don't need that kudos."

Jan Vansina, an Africanist in the University of Wisconsin's history department who rejected at Harvard tenure offer last December, suggests another way that Harvard's prestige can work adversely in a tenure negotiation.

"Suppose a fierce egalitarian who thinks Harvard's department in his field is totally overrated gets an offer there." Vansina says, adding that he is not describing his own situation. "That offer is from the establishment they've spent so much effort fighting, and they're liable to resent it."