Columbia Puritan Expert Accepts Harvard Tenure

Harvard has persuaded a prominent American literature specialist to take a tenured position in the English Department, luring him away from a professorship at Columbia University.

Sacvan Bercovich confirmed yesterday that he has accepted a Harvard tenure offer and will assume the position in September, pending routine Corporation approval.

Several English Department members yesterday praised Bercovich--considered one of the foremost Puritan culture and literature scholars in the country.

"He was a very clear first choice for the position," said Warner B. Berthoff, professor of English and American Literature, who suggested that the offer was in part designed to fill a spot vacated by retiring Thomas Professor of English and American Literature, Daniel Aaron.

"Particularly with Professor Aaron's retirement, I think we will continue our strength in the American field," Barthoff said.

Traditions and Structures

In a telephone interview from his New York home, Bercovich said that the "traditions and structures" of Harvard American studies programs induced him to choose Harvard in what he called "the most difficult career decision" he has ever had to make.

One of Bercovich's Columbia colleagues, English Department chairman Martin Meisel, called his departure a "severe loss" for the university. "I have nothing but envy for Harvard," he said. "We fortunately have some depth in the field, but he is the sort of person who is irreplaceable.

"We did everything that we could" to keep Bercovich, Meisel said, adding "Columbia doesn't quite have the resources Harvard has "But, he said, Columbia made a "creditable response" to Harvard's offer to try to keep whom he called "the best in his field. Harvard English Department Chairman Larry, D. Benson was unavailable for comment yesterday.

Tearful Departure

"It was hard to leave I've been at Columbia a long time I have some deep attachments here," Bercovich said. "What turned it around was the opportunities in American literature and culture at Harvard."

Bercovich cited Harvard's committees on History and Literature and History of American Civilization, as well as the English Department, as the sort of "structures which invite the possibility of American culture studies in a kind of long term way.

"What I would like to do is to use these resources [to] make Harvard a center for American literature and culture," he said.

Teaching Undergrads

Bercovich has been a full professor at Columbia since 1970, and he has written two books on Puritan thought and literature as well as numerous articles on that and other aspects of American culture. He said that he planned to teach an undergraduate course covering American Puritanism and Romanticism and a graduate course on Melville--the subject of his current research.

"I think that I prefer undergraduate teaching and I would insist on it for myself," said the Canadian-born Bercovich.

Bercovich said that money had nothing to do with his decision, which he said was solely based on his positive feelings about Harvard

One Harvard English professor interviewed yesterday said that the Bercovich appointment was part of an ongoing transition in the Department to build a new generation of scholars.

Morton W. Bloomfield, Porter Professor of English, cited the recent appointments of Marjorie Garber, professor of English, Barbara Lewalski, professor of History and Literature; and Helen Vendler, visiting professor of English and American Literature, along with the tenuring of Bercovich.

"Yale is going on the way down now, and we're going up," said Bloomfield, who is retiring this year along with Aaron. He said there are still appointments to be made in Medieval and Victorian literature, but that, "In five to six years, the whole department is going to be on the way up."

Bloomfield added that Bercovich "has just revolutionized the field of American literature." Bloomfield cited in particular the Columbia scholar's work in realizing the importance of Puritan typology, that is, the way those early settlers felt they were "fulfilling the Biblical pattern."

Bercovich was born on Montreal in 1933 and attended high school there, "the first in his family" to do so, he said After high school, he moved to Israel, where he lived on a Kibbutz for several years, before returning to the United States for further education.

He attended, by night, Sir George Williams College in Montreal, graduating in 1961. He then received his doctorate in 1965 from Claremont University in California in 1965.

Though Bercovich has never lived in Boston, his arrival at Harvard in the fall will in a strange way be kind of a homecoming. His "idealistic" mother, he said, named him after Sacco and Vanzetti, the famous anarchists who were executed for treason in Boston during the "red scare" of the 1920s. "In a way," Bercovich chuckled, "I'll be returning to the scene of the crime.