Profiting Professors

One might think that being a professor at Harvard University would be enough. Receiving tenure at the most prestigious university in the country used to be the pinnacle of a career in academia.

But professors like Arthur R. Miller and Michael J. Sandel are still out to conquer the rest of the academic world.

Sandel--who has recorded his lectures for release to the public--and Miller, who attempted to release his lectures online, are testing the University's revised policies to monitor faculty members' for-profit or for-prestige activities.

"The more like a regular course an activity is, the less likely it is to be permitted," says Associate Provost Dennis F. Thompson, the chair of the Faculty Committee on Outside Activity. "But obviously there are going to be some gray areas."

The Internet explosion has made the gray areas more gray.

Rule-bending--and in some cases rule-breaking--has become the norm for several professors.

But faculty argue that promoting their research by writing books and lecturing is their job, and that their value to the faculty is as a researcher and a writer, as well as a teacher.

"Publication is a traditional part of what professors do," says Professor of Afro-American Studies and Philosophy K. Anthony Appiah. "The main thing is that you have to be able to meet your responsibilities as a teacher."

But professors' conceptions of these responsibilities have changed. And the University fears that professors who want to promote themselves outside Harvard are often forced to compromise their allegiance to their students in favor of their public image.

The Rules

According to current University regulations, professors can spend, at most, 20 percent of their effort as a faculty member on outside activities--whether it be on guest lecturing, writing or public appearances.

Although each Harvard school interprets the standard differently--Harvard Law School counts hours, the Kennedy School of Government counts days and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) counts effort--the principle is the same.

According to Thompson, there are very few faculty members who violate the time constraint. And so the University's recent move to clarify its rules has left many wondering why a crackdown is necessary at all.

Calling them preventive measures, Thompson says the ease of Internet access and problems at other universities provided the impetus behind Harvard's new guidelines.

"I think that is one of the reasons we wanted to clarify the

rules--so that everyone can better understand how the old principles apply to the new technologies," hompson says.

The University has set up a process to decide case by case what is permissible, but the lines are tough to draw.

"It may be O.K. to present a few lectures on the Internet or to put some of your course materials on the Internet," Thompson says. "It is not okay to offer your Harvard courses at an online university."

Director of the Harvard University Library and Pforzheimer University Professor Sidney Verba '53 says the University's guidelines give professors enough time to complete their required tasks.

"The regulations are a balance between what you owe to the University as a professor and the kind of flexibility that faculty need to carry out obligations to their professional lives," says Verba, who is also a member of the committee on outside activity.

FAS Dean for Research and Information Technology Paul C. Martin says he thinks Harvard has a well-established set of rules and policies.

"This is the one place that professors are supposed to do their face-to-face teaching. But no one would regard it as unethical for a Harvard professor to be used by students elsewhere as well," he says.

Exclusive Education?

This University must now grapple with the question of ethics.

Because of the ease with which lectures can be uploaded to the Internet, time is no longer an obstacle for professors who want to bend the rules. The issue, say FAS officials, is whether outside activities themselves can be considered ethical.

University administrators are concerned that if professors make the content of their lectures availible to the general public, the 'exclusive' Harvard education that students should be receiving may be compromised.

"The Harvard name has been built up over centuries...and one must worry about the quality of anything that has the name attached to it," says Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles.

Thompson says the University's policy should make it impermissible for a Harvard faculty member to try to teach somewhere else.

"Harvard students come expecting a distinctively Harvard education and we have an obligation to provide an experience here that we don't provide to the rest of the world," Thompson says. "If you are a full time Harvard faculty member, you should not be devoting your time to Yale."

But the question of whether 'teaching' also includes virtual teaching is one that is still unanswered.

But some argue that the point is moot because nothing--even videotaped lectures--is the same as an actual course at Harvard.

"Distance learning is no substitute for the real thing," says Professor of Government Michael J. Sandel.

Sandel, who videotaped several lectures in a private studio for an educational company, says he does not intend for the lectures to serve as a full course, and that they are aimed at a completely different audience.

He says, however, that he would never put lectures on the Internet for fear that students would watch them as an alternative to coming to class and getting the interactive experience that they need in order to learn.

Williston Professor of Law Robert H. Mnookin '64, who was also a member of the committee on outside activity, says the lines are fuzzy.

"What the Internet has done is that it has blurred the distinction between books that are used for instructional purposes and those that aren't."

Balancing Act or Violation?

Professors who sell their lectures or have produced popular books argue that they always put their students first.

Elaine Kamarck, a lecturer at the

Kennedy School of Government and a top policy adviser to presidential candidate Al Gore '69, says that there is always a way to fit in outside activities. But if a professor is instead struggling to fit in teaching, Kamarck says it is time to quit.

Through the end of 1999, Kamarck taught at the Kennedy School and flew to Washington at least once a week to assist Gore's staff.

"It was really hard. You end up doing a lot of your class preparation on airplanes, and you end up doing it late into the evening and into the morning," Kamarck says. "I dragged my students papers all over New Hampshire, and I found myself grading papers while sitting in hotel lobbies."

Kamarck says she never missed even one office hour during her time working double duty, and when she realized that the campaign was taking too much of her time, she decided to go on leave.

"If professors are cheating and skimping on time with their students, then that's a problem," she says.

Appiah says it is the job of professors to research and publicize their work to the outside community.

Appiah says that textbooks--he wrote one on philosophy and edited an encyclopedia on Africa--are not meant as an algorithm for generating a lecture and thus do not present a compromise to Harvard's integrity when sold to the outside world.

"I think the reason why people ask Harvard professors to write textbooks is because they want them to reflect their experiences at Harvard," he says.

Appiah says he believes that although lectures themselves belong to the University, the intellectual content that a professor might use to write a textbook does not. He too emphasizes the fact that there is nothing that can substitute for a student's actually taking a class.

"Lectures are not all that a class consists of. Since many students don't go to lectures in a course, students clearly recognize that too," Appiah says.

Double Dipping

But time is not always the problem when evaluating a professor's conflict of interest.

A concern that has arisen for professors who cater to two different audiences--both their students in lecture and the mass public over the airwaves--is that they will favor the audience that helps them earn the most money.

When professors target their lectures towards the public as opposed to Harvard students, students may suffer.

"If you design the course with two different audiences in mind--for students in a Harvard classroom and users on the net--the question is raised which one you are focusing on," Thomson says.

Bromley Professor of Law Arthur R. Miller at Harvard Law School is one professor who has encountered such a problem.

Miller says the University's new restriction on putting lectures online can inhibit a professor's desire to enrich the intellectual community at large.

"This is a radical change in policy that restricts our freedom," Miller told The Crimson after the draft of Harvard's new policy was released.

But the concept of Internet education is one that has long been questioned.

"When I am preparing a course for the Internet, it may or may not be the best thing for my own students," Thompson says. "I might be tempted to redesign my course to make it more suitable for the net than for my classroom."

Even Kamarck says that when she was juggling her public career with her job as a professor, there was an inevitable amount of convergence.

"If you are teaching government and working in a presidential campaign, there is bound to be substantial overlap," she says. "There are definitely things that I work on in the campaign that I end up using in class."

Verba says that sometimes it is hard to recognize when a professor is compromising his or her students--and that is the ultimate issue.

"We all write books which sometimes are based on courses and that is not usually considered a conflict of interest," he says. "But if you videotape your course and sell it through a commercial university, then that is really in competition with what you owe Harvard."