It Was Good For Us: Cheeky 'Sex' Professor to Retire After 37 Years

On a fifth floor bulletin board at the Peabody Museum, hang pictures of the all of the Faculty in Harvard's Anthropology department. Most professors have a simple, casual portrait with their names beneath it.

Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology Irven DeVore's portrait, features a ghastly white man, with a bandaged head who looks an awful lot like Frankenstein.

DeVore, who was recovering from head surgery at the time, is holding a sign that reads, "Brain Donor of the Month."

For decades, thousands of Harvard students have experienced DeVore's unique, outrageous sense of humor. Most know him through his class Science B-29 "Human Behavioral Biology," usually known simply as "Sex."

Most don't know him as a pioneering anthropologist, a leading scholar in the field of sociobiology and an oft-quoted authority.

Next fall, students have their last chance to meet him.

Citing health concerns and a desire to spend more time with his family, DeVore , 65, will retire after 37 years at Harvard.

"I'm tired," DeVore says. "I was determined not to let my grandchildren slip by without spending more quality time [with them]."

DeVore's colleagues that he is not only an eminent scholar and one of the College's most popular teachers. He is also one of the most caring people they know.

A Natural Life

DeVore was born in Joy, Texas--population 8. He says Joy still boasts only 8 people today.

By 14, DeVore was a practicing minister, preaching to a congregation of 800 boy scouts.

But just over ten years later, DeVore was completing his Ph.D. research on of African baboons. At the time, he says, there were very few published studies of primate behavioral ecology.

"You never get over your first fieldwork," DeVore says of his experiences. "It's like a virgin's first crush or first kiss."

By 1963, DeVore was deep in the Kalahari desert, performing the first professional study of the !Kung San people (Bushmen) of Botswana, who are known in the West for their click-full language.

"There's a romance to living out in the Kalahari desert," DeVore says. "You could almost read a newspaper by starlight."

Some of his animal companions had different ideas about "romance." DeVore is fond of telling his B-29 class about a particularly affectionate orangutan.

Not that it's been all lighthearted--DeVore says he has had less than friendly encounters with elephants and lions. He has even been struck by lightening.

But what scares DeVore most are tropical diseases.

"The microbes are far more dangerous," he says. "I had some colleagues die recently who just went back to the tropics one too many times."

Yet for all his work deep in Africa, DeVore met his match in Martha's Vineyard. USA. On a trip there in 1984, he contracted tularemia, an extremely rare disease found in ticks and rabbits, and Lyme disease.

With DeVore, each new class brings a new story.

Andy J. Marshall, head teaching fellow for Human Behavioral Biology, says the stories that DeVore tells in class represents only a fraction of his fascinating experiences.

"If you sat him down with a tape recorder and he just told stories, you could make millions selling the tapes," Marshall says.

"You get the sense he's one of those people that's lived ten lifetimes in the amount of time he's been around," he adds.

DeVore has made sure that others enjoyed researching with him.

Anthropology Professor Richard W. Wrangham, who participated in a study of Pygmies in the Congo that DeVore directed, says DeVore refused to focus only on his own research while in the field.

"The essence of his working style is to create an environment in which people flourish," Wrangham says. "He does so by making life interesting and fun, and by bringing people with different kinds of ideas together."

Perhaps as a result of the attention he gives to others, many of those DeVore has taught are now among today's greatest minds in anthropology.

DeVore's past students include primatologist Sarah Hrdy, Robert Trivers, a prominent figure in evolutionary theory for the past three decades and John Tooby, a founder of evolutionary psychology.

"Probably more than anyone, he has had a series of very successful students who have gone on to become very famous," says Frank W. Marlowe, a Harvard behavioral ecologist who studies sex and mating systems.

"He's sort of like the grandfather. He trained everyone," says Matthew H. McIntyre, a teaching fellow in Science B-29. "Even if people disagree with him, they always make some sort of reference to him."

Healthy Opium for the Masses

Ever since he arrived at Harvard, DeVore's classes have been in high demand.

His first course at Harvard, co-taught with three of the foremost anthropologists of the time, attracted an 800-person line on the day of registration.

At the time, a student's chances of getting into a class depended on his or her place in line. DeVore said spaces for the first 200 slots in line were being sold for up to $150.

"This was the incident that made them work out the more civilized rules [of registration]," DeVore says.

This fall, enrollment in Science B-29 was again limited, although the lottery system has improved somewhat since the 1960s.

Those who are not lured by the appeal of a class called "Sex," are drawn in by DeVore's enthusiastic, often peculiar, teaching style.

"The reason his course is [one of] the largest at Harvard is because of him, not because of the subject matter," Marlowe says.

DeVore makes no secret of his teaching strategy.

"I tend to teach by humor and shock," DeVore says. "I try to keep bored undergraduates awake."

"Before the end of the term, I will have insulted every religious group and gender in the world," he adds.

DeVore has been known to jump around and gyrate his hips in an impression of buffaloes mating.

"Apparently he does a very good imitation of lions having sex," Marlowe says.

Propriety on parents' weekend be damned--DeVore has been known to introduce the visitors to a spicier side of Harvard.

But course teaching fellows say DeVore's class has value far beyond its humor and abundance of sexual innuendoes.

"Professor DeVore's lectures are connected to real life very well," says Aykan Erdemer, a teaching fellow for Human Behavioral Biology. "The course has the potential to make [students] more caring and responsible citizens."

Erdemer said DeVore's course is more than sex; it is also about abortion, child care, reciprocal altruism and charity.

"It is truly the most amazing course I've taken here," Erdemer adds.

Widespread appreciation of DeVore's teaching is not a recent phenomenon. At an alumni review of the Core Curriculum in New York, several alumni cited "Sex" as the most enjoyable course they had taken at Harvard.

"That course came up as something that they had liked at the time, but more importantly, something that had really stuck with them," says Director of the Core Program Susan W. Lewis.

DeVore called this recognition his proudest moment.

The Private DeVore

Those who know DeVore all praise his softer side.

"Deep down he's really sweet," McIntyre says. "He's one of the nicest people in the department."

Marshall says DeVore shows genuine concern for his teaching fellows.

"He's always looking out for our best interests beyond just being TFs for our course," he says.

DeVore also carries his love of animals into his own home.

In addition to dogs and several types of exotic fish, visitors to his house over past years might have found themselves among frogs, doves or even chickens.

Outside his home, DeVore has created his own version of the 100 Acre Wood. Two years ago, he converted the stump of an old maple tree near his house on Hurlbut St. into a home for Winnie the Pooh.

Not stopping there, he then expanded on the Pooh theme. Now, all along the street are elaborate scenes involving Pooh's friends, from Piglet to Owl to Eeyore.

DeVore encourages people of all ages to visit and enjoy the display.

"He's very attentive to making life sweet," Erdemer says. "In this day and age, who would spend time to do such a thing?"