Thomson Travels Between Harvard and B.U.

James C. Thomson, who resigned in May after 12 years as curator of Harvard's Nieman Foundation for Journalism, has gained tenure on the Faculty of Boston University (B.U.) and will remain an associate of Harvard's Fairbank Center for East Asian Research.

"I packed my bags and made the great leap across the river to Boston University this fall," Thomson said yesterday.

Thomson will teach journalism, history and international affairs in the spring, after spending the fall as director of B.U.'s Institute for Democratic Communications, an umbrella group conducting research seminars concerned with First Amendment Issues and the press.

Thomson will also direct B.U.'s Graduate Colloquium in Journalism, an off-the-record seminar with prominent journalists that studies such as Central American politics.

Thomson, who led a freshman seminar at Harvard, will teach undergraduate courses in American East Asian Relations, American Reporting of Revolutions in East Asia, and Modern Chinese History. He said he looks forwards to teaching undergraduate on a full time basis.

Born in the China to American missionaries, Thomson attended Yale as an undergraduate and took graduate degrees from Harvard. He will devote some of his time researching and writing at the Fairbank Center.

Contrasting Harvard and B.U., Thomson said B.U. "Is trying to move fast and is doing so successfully, Harvard's danger is complacency." He said his only problem has proved to be Boston's chronic parking shortage.