In a New York State of Mind

Thirteen years ago, it didn't take much wooing to lure Simon M. Schama from Cambridge, England to Cambridge, Mass.

"They were sniffing at me and I was sniffing at them," says Schama, Mellon professor of the social sciences, of his 1980 move to Harvard.

But it took far more courting to draw the highly acclaimed scholar of modern European intellectual history from Cambridge to New York.

After an intense and drawn-out recruiting effort by New York's Columbia University that kept Schama's Harvard colleagues and students on edge for more than a year, Schama this spring accepted an offer to join Columbia's departments of history and art history in the fall.

His departure means the loss of one of Harvard's most prized scholars--a popular teacher with a burgeoning international reputation. More than that, however, it represents another chapter in the escalation of bidding wars for big-name professors at the nation's elite colleges and universities.

Harvard--which for decades has relied almost exclusively on its name to attract and keep academic stars--is increasingly finding itself outgunned by other schools offering more attractive salaries and perks.

The subtle solicitation started more than a year ago when Schama's wife, Virginia E. Papaioannou, was offered a tenured position at Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons--complete with her own laboratory.

Papaioannou, an associate professor of pathology at Tufts University Medical School, is working on better techniques for creating genetically altered, or transgenic, mice.

Soon after, Columbia offered Schama a position that Papaiaounnou calls "clearly compatible" with the one he has held at Harvard.

"Columbia decided they would approach me," says Schama. "But it wouldn't have happened had not the scientific opportunity happened for Ginny."

Harvard and other top universities around the country have come to realize, over the past few years, that the considerations made by professors in deciding to relocate go far beyond their own interests.

Spouses, for example, can play as important a role in determining the feasibility of a move as the recruited professor. In an urban location such as Boston, saturated with universities and other industry, job placement for non-academic professional spouses is not difficult.

In years past, Harvard simply found posts for spouses. For example, Georgene B. Herschbach, wife of Nobel Prize-winning Baird Professor of Science Dudley R. Herschbach, works as registrar for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Jane S. Knowles, wife of current Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles, is a librarian in Radcliffe's Schlesinger Library.

But dual career academic families present new problems. In electing to offer tenure to one spouse, Harvard has increasingly become aware that with the rarity of tenured positions at top universities in a given region, the future of the spouse's career must be taken into account.

Peter L. Galison '77, a historian of 20th century physics, was tenured in 1991 by the History of Science Department. But he wouldn't accept the Harvard offer until officials secured a position for his site--who is now a professor of fine arts at Boston University.

The Kennedy School of Government's Stanton Professor of the First Amendment Frederick Schauer just finished his third year at Harvard. In order to secure his acceptance, the University needed to find his wife, Virginia J. Wise, a position. And it did, Wise is now a lecturer on law for legal research at the Law School.

Galison and Schauer are success stories for Harvard. But the University also loses some battles for top names. The Schama case is just one example.

Acting History Department Chair John Womack Jr. says the department has tried to make appointments in the last year, but has either not found appropriate candidates or has not been able to attract them here, because of considerations the recruits were forced to make regarding their spouses.

What seemed to distinguish the Schama tenure battle from others in the recent past is that Schama, not Papaioannou, seemed to be the spouse necessitating heavy recruiting.

For example, Harvard's usual practice would have been to search for a comparable position for Papaioannou at a Boston-area university or medical school, had they wanted to hold on to Schama, which by all reports, they did.

"I would be very surprised if that option had not been broached...this is the way these things are done," says McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History Steven Ozment. "I surmise that the question was brought to the [Harvard] Medical School and there was no interest in that sort of thing."

But Harvard either didn't search, or wasn't able to find a post. And that suggests that Columbia may have made an end-run around traditional strategies of luring big names, approaching Schama's wife before they approached Schama--the real prize.

The offer to Papaioannou may have been the ultimate lure for Schama, a huge international name whose university's zip code is of little importance to either his colleagues or book publishers.

Harvard Medical School professors, for instance, are puzzled as to why Harvard failed to find a faculty position for Papaioannou, who Lan Bo Chen, professor of pathology, calls "very, very good."

"Lots of people at Harvard would love to have her," says Chen. "It should be very easy to create a position for her at Harvard."

"She's definitely Harvard caliber," he says.

Schama says that while the offer made to his wife was a "golden opportunity," he sees the move as an "equal job opportunity" for both. "I'm delighted to be going there and eager to start," he says.

Entering Columbia will not be a completely new experience for Schama. He says he already has many friends in Columbia's History Department, which is much bigger than Harvard's. "It's not like going to a new place," he says.

And Schama's colleagues at Columbia say his breadth of knowledge and interests will be an important asset to their department.

"We're thrilled that he's coming," says Alan Brinkley, a former lecturer at Harvard in history and literature. "There is no historian who does the sorts of things Simon does."

Schama plans to teach a year-long course on environmental history, which he hopes will contribute to his next book on landscape and memory.

He also plans to continue his unorthodox classroom method, encouraging his students to focus on the details of stories about the historical periods they are studying. It is an approach which, he says "fold[s] them into the world" of history.

"The point [is] to make contact with the lived reality of the past," he says. "I want the students to learn, remember and to embrace...the complicated human reality of these stories."

But he hopes that his initial reception at Columbia is not the same as that which he received upon arriving at Harvard 13 years ago.

"I would get up and give a lecture and I'd set up the argument, but a lot of the lecture would be filled with evidence...details," he says. "And I used to notice quickly that students would put down their pens."

"Story-telling [is] an extremely serious matter and [has] at least as much intellectual toughness and dignity and complexity as delivery of point one, two, and three," Schama says, his forehead furrowing. "[In my writing] the meat of the history is very often in story-telling.

Storytelling is one of the keys to understanding historical detail, Schama says. "When I was growing up," he recalls, "I was taught history would die on the page if it wasn't written not only for other professional working stiffs but also for the public."

Schama practices what he preaches. His books, The Embarrassment of Riches (1987), Citizens (1989) and Dead Certainties (1991), have all been critically acclaimed bestsellers--narrative histories dealing with European cultural and intellectual trends.

But it is precisely Schama's habit of flaunting standard historical practices of study that has often embroiled him in debates over the quality and accuracy of his scholarship.

Some historians have accused Schama of losing his objectivity by getting to close to his work. But Schama says the opponents of his style do not include his colleagues at Harvard.

"Its never been my take that we [History Department professors] take strict methodological differences," Schama says. "I've noticed tremendous generosity in the occasionally wacky experiments I've done."

Regardless of the recruitment strategies and backroom politics involved in the move, Harvard will feel Schama's loss deeply.

While professors and administrators have said that Harvard is becoming less complacent about losing in tenure bids, it may take the sting of Schama's departure to finally galvanize the faculty into action.

"There are more first-rate universities than years ago," says Womack. "Before, it used to be they would drop everything to come to Harvard."

The victim of this latest bidding war is Harvard's already ailing History Department.

Schama was one of the department's most prized assets--a best-selling author with an international reputation and one of the Faculty's most consistently popular professors. His departure widens a growing gap in many fields of European history and culture.

"We're losing a very gifted and unique person," says Ozment. "Schama gets the undergraduates' attention. He draws them from other concentrations."

Schama's interests span a wide range of historic, geographic and thematic areas of study, students and professors say. "There are few historians who move intellectually over as many subjects and parts of the world as Professor Schama has been able to do," says Professor of History James Hankins.

For the department, Schama's departure signals a greater urgency to fill four senior positions that have been empty for more than a year.

"In some ways, if it's one year, it won't make that much of a difference," says Womack. "But if he's leaving for good, it's a much bigger deal."

Schama's History Department colleagues express the hope that Schama will return after only a short stay at Columbia--chances for which are "slim," in Ozment's words.

With this in mind, Schama was given permission for a one year leave of absence, a right Ozment says is granted to all faculty members who are on the verge of resigning.

"I hope that it [Columbia] is not the place for him," Ozment says. "It's unusual for faculty to go and come...but it's nice to hold the door open. He's welcome should he want to come back."