A Different Brandt of Academic

During World War I, 30,000 prostitutes were incarcerated in barbed-wire camps to protect American soldiers from venereal disease. In 1986, the rightwing political figure Lyndon LaRouche proposed the quarantine of homosexuals to protect the rest of America's population from AIDS.

"Attitudes and values about sexuality haven't changed as much as we think they have. Victorian notions of sexuality still have a powerful influence," says Allan M. Brandt, assistant professor of the history of science and medicine. Brandt studies the effects such attitudes have had in the past and applies his conclusions to the present, successfully bridging the gap from academia to public policy issues.

Brandt's joint appointment in the History and Science Department and the Medical School's Department of Social Medicine and Public Health allows him to teach both undergraduate and professional students about the values and ethics implicit in modern science and medicine, including issues of gender and sexuality, he says.

In addition, Brandt, who came to Harvard in 1982, participates in projects at the Kennedy School of Government, offering a broad socio-historical perspective to public policy studies involving issues of medicine and public health.

The social historian's most recent project involves working with a study group at the K-School investigating public policy options for handling the AIDS epidemic. The Reagan Administration, he says, has not paid enough attention to AIDS as a serious problem, not providing adequate funding and "hoping it will go away."

"The problem with AIDS is that on the one hand, public health officials want to be reassuring, saying it's not easy to catch if you don't engage in specific behavior, because if people become hysterical it will lead to worthless and dangerous interventions of civil liberties. On the other hand, it is a very serious problem and needs to be directly confronted," he says.

The K-School study group, which consists of professors, doctors, researchers and policy makers, was formed in response to AIDS hysteria and the random solutions of quarantine and testing it provoked. The group is researching methods of screening for AIDS without violating civil liberties, says Jonathan H. Mermin '87-'88, a student who is taking this year off to initiate the study group. "The group is dealing with questions of accuracy, who to test and the political and social effects of tests," he says.

Brandt brings the perspective of history to the group, says Mermin, pointing out that sexually transmitted diseases are not a purely 1980s phenomenon, but date back through the centuries.

"In the hysteria of war, radical measures were taken with little or no public health benefit," says Brandt, referring to the incarceration of prostitutes. "Before invoking radical measures in the AIDS epidemic, we have to know they'll work and [that] they are the least restrictive of all possible measures," Brandt says. "Maybe legislators can learn from past mistakes or successes," he adds.

Education is crucial to understanding AIDS, Brandt says. But education raises a whole new set of problems of how to teach adolescents about sexuality and homosexuality, Brandt says. Brandt is concerned "that education would say the way to avoid AIDS is not to be homosexual."

"People haven't considered the larger social and psychological attitudes affected by the AIDS epidemic," Brandt says. Coping with it effectively will "require people to reassess their traditional ideas about homosexuality," he adds.

Relating Past and Present

Brandt's colleagues praise his ability to relate historical issues to the modern world, both in his scholarly work and in the classroom. "He has an eye for questions that are inherently historically interesting, but also have real meaning for today's issues," says Everett I. Mendelsohn, professor of the history of science.

"He is seen as one of the bright young lights in the department," Mendelsohn says of the 32-year-old Brandt. "He has a fine ability to take controversial issues and project them to an audience of people new to the field."

In his classes, Brandt, who did his undergraduate work at Brandeis and received a Ph. D. from Columbia, says he stresses that "academic disciplines speak to contemporary social problems. "He says he is "interested in encouraging their intersection, in myself and my students."

Students laud Brandt for his ability to apply his historical work to current concerns and for his compelling and accessible teaching style. "His course, [History and Science 142] 'Values and Ethics in Modern Medicine and Science,' has helped me develop a sense of social awareness and a historical perspective," says Robert Lowe '88, a biology concentrator.

"He's unpretentious and welcoming to students, something really rare at Harvard," says history and science concentrator Richard Seifeddine '87.

At the Medical School, Brandt teaches an elective course in medical ethics which regularly attracts large enrollment, says Leon Eisenberg, Presley Professor of Social Medicine. "The large numbers of students are a compliment to his skill as a teacher."

Brandt's next project will be a book on the history of cigarette smoking, asking why people smoke and how it got to be popular, considering the issue in terms of class and gender. For instance, he says, in the 1920s, smoking was a feminist issue--Radcliffe women rioted because they weren't allowed to smoke and Harvard men were.