Steinberg

To the Editors of the Crimson:

Most Harvard students, faced with the inaccessibility of the senior faculty, either give up on intellectual life in the classroom or find a graduate student or junior professor who is both full of ideas and actually interested in helping them learn. For us, Allen Steinberg has been that person.

Professor Steinberg covers intellectual territory which--although popular outside Harvard--is unique in this History department; he is the lone historian of America on the Social Studies faculty. In both History and Social Studies he has advised half a dozen summa and prize-winning theses in three years, some written by students who might otherwise have despaired of studying American history at Harvard. Most important, impressive, and remarkable, given the demands placed on scholars at the associate professor level, Allen Steinberg never gives in to the easy analysis or explanation. In lecture and discussion he is forever reaching for the perfect word, or the delicate analysis, which makes a student's mental juices flow.

It is testimony to the selfish mean-spiritedness of those unfortunately entrusted with the Harvard History Department that they have denied students the benefit of his presence even as a junior professor by refusing to renew his contract. Damon Silvers '86   Felicia Kornbluh '88-'89