Global Mission Poses Challenge

When John H. Coatsworth, director of Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS), arrives in foreign countries to meet and greet scholars from the local university, he usually discovers that another group from Harvard has just left.

And while Harvard may be in the midst of leaving its footprints all over the world, Coatsworth calls this experience of instant globalization “very confusing.”

In addition to the individual research conducted by Harvard professors, the University maintains 42 active research centers outside the United States and around the globe, from the Harvard Medical School (HMS) center in Dubai to the Davis Center for Russian Studies in Moscow to the School of Public Health laboratory for AIDS research in Botswana.

But upon witnessing the increased specialization of international centers—and the lack of coordination among them—Harvard administrators commissioned a task force this fall to investigate University-wide collaboration and integration in the area of international study and research.

Currently, only one of the 42 international research centers—the DRCLAS center in Santiago, Chile—furnishes resources for a wide variety of groups, including undergraduates, graduates and faculty.

The task force on international study, chaired by Director of the Weatherhead Center Jorge I. Dominguez and commonly referred to as the “Dominguez Task Force,” will seek to centralize Harvard’s global initiatives and to ensure that Coatsworth and other professors no longer find themselves in the dark regarding Harvard’s other international programs.

According to Coatsworth, who serves as a member of task force, the group will try to ensure that members of the community are aware of Harvard’s international activities.

Dominguez declined to comment on the details of the task force, but says that it remains undecided when the group will submit its final report detailing how Harvard should coordinate its international presence.

Assistant Provost Sean T. Buffington ’91 says the Provost’s Office eagerly awaits a completed report from Dominguez and his task force. He says Provost Steven E. Hyman and President Lawrence H. Summers will consider the task force’s recommendations and findings after it releases the report.

Coatsworth says the task force will likely recommend the creation of a new administrative post to centralize Harvard’s global centers and programs. Such a position could follow two distinct models, Coatwsorth adds. Either the new staff person could organize and share existing information about international study and research, or he or she could serve as a “deputy provost,” working to develop new international strategy and programs, following in the tradition of other universities with deputy provosts, such as Georgetown and Columbia.

SERVICE IN SANTIAGO

Currently, the only center that embodies the multi-purpose function that the task force aims to achieve with all centers is The Santiago Center in Chile.

Coatsworth, who has worked extensively at the center, calls the collaboration a “pilot project.”

“The mission of the Santiago office,” he says, “is to provide services to any Harvard faculty member or student with a research interest in Chile and its four surrounding countries.”

The Santiago Center is the only University organization that formally orchestrates an organized study abroad program for undergraduates, including housing and registration at three local Chilean universities. The Center’s office in Santiago also functions as a vital resource for students studying abroad there.

The Santiago Center serves, however, more than just undergraduates. The office sends third-year HMS students to a local hospital to practice and train treating Spanish-speaking patients. And the Design School has begun a new program that focuses on the teaching of design and development of low-cost housing through The Santiago Center. The office also collaborates with individual members of the faculty on a number of projects, from museum exhibits to academic field conferences.

Dwight Perkins, the director of Harvad’s Asia Center, says that the success of the Santiago Office—in addition to the underlying need to support students and faculty abroad—has spawned serious discussions throughout the University about erecting more centers in other parts of the world, as well as growing and integrating Harvard centers already in existence. Perkins says it is too early to tell whether the Asia Center—currently only operative in Cambridge—will expand its program to service students and faculty abroad.

“Certainly if we were to set up such an office it would be closer to the Chilean model,” he says.

PARTNERSHIPS IN ASIA

Meanwhile, other Harvard centers are sprouting up across the globe.

In February, the Harvard Business School (HBS) will open up its fifth research center in Mumbai, India. The center will gear towards faculty research on the local economies of India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

And within a year, the South Asia Initiative (SAI), which is affiliated with the Asia Center, will establish its international presence in Mumbai, India with an office physically adjacent to—but substantively separate from—the HBS center.

The integrated Mumbai Center—a small group of offices covering no more than 2,000 square feet—is the fifth international center to spring up from the HBS “Global Initiative.”

The initiative promotes research that is international in scope and impact, according to Senior Associate Dean of International Development John A. Quelch.

Quelch says that while he respects the mission of the Dominguez task force, he finds that it does not address “one fundamental issue.”

“There is a difference between a global university and an American university that likes to consider itself global,” Quelch says.

He says that while Harvard is on its way to becoming the former, it still has a long way to go.

Centers such as the ones in Mumbai, says Quelch, can motivate faculty to focus their research abroad. He says there is tremendous opportunity for research to make a larger impact if the faculty conceives it with the world—and not simply the United States—in mind.

“In a global university,” he says, “the core essence of everyone on faculty embodies the global perspective.”

Another major step in Harvard’s transition from “an American university that likes to consider itself global” to becoming an actual “global university” is expanding its study abroad programs.

The South Asia Initiative is working with the College’s Office of International Programs to develop a new model for undergraduate study abroad in South Asia. The Mumbai office will offer a student orientation program and contacts with universities, research institutions and non-government organizations in the region.

“The offices of the President and Provost have been very supportive in providing initial-phase operational funding for the SAI,” writes SAI Assistant Director Rena Fonseca in an e-mail. She adds that they have also been supportive in “providing thoughtful perspective, space in the new building, and many other kinds of support, both tangible and intangible.”

Assistant Provost Buffington says Summers and Hyman also encouraged collaboration and support between HBS and SAI. Summers told HBS Dean Kim B. Clark to look at the new Mumbai Center as a “modular system,” according to Buffington. The modular model, Buffington says, recommends that schools or centers looking to expand abroad should seek partnerships with other sectors of Harvard in the area. When convenient, as in the case of the HBS and SAI centers in Mumbai, they should share office space and administrative support with other Harvard groups.

The Dominguez task force is open to adopting this “modular system” and more integrative approach in setting up these international centers, according to Buffington. While he acknowledges that HBS and SAI agreed last-minute to partner their offices in Mumbai, he says that future centers will have greater “modular” integration and will seek to unite Harvard’s presence abroad.

But HBS Senior Associate Dean Richard H.K. Vietor says that despite this aim to centralize research abroad, international centers will not lose their autonomy. Their primary purpose and responsibility will remain the same—to support business school faculty conducting international research.

—Staff writer Kevin J. Feeney can be reached at kjfeeney@fas.harvard.edu.