Bio-Anthro Profs Seek Own Dept.

The biological anthropology wing of Harvard’s Department of Anthropology has submitted a preliminary proposal to leave the department and establish its own.

Citing a disconnect between biological anthropology and the focus of the rest of the 119-year-old anthropology department, the biological anthropologists wrote a 13-page report, obtained by The Crimson, that calls for a new Department of Human Evolutionary Biology (HEB) with its own undergraduate concentration and Ph.D. program.

Members of the full anthropology department met yesterday afternoon for the first time to discuss the proposal. A professor at the meeting, who asked not to be named, said it was “very congenial” and that no key decisions were made.

The proposal, the professor said, “represents what I think is a long-running desire by the biological anthropology wing to be recognized as more of a life science and not to be subject to review or critique by social anthropology.”

The new department would report to Harvard’s dean for the life sciences, rather than to the dean for the social sciences, to which the Department of Anthropology is accountable.

The department’s current structure, the proposal argues, is inadequate and restrictive for biological anthropologists.

“Remaining in anthropology, whose intellectual bases are rooted in the social sciences (and, increasingly, in the humanities) does not fully reflect the nature of the field in terms of either research or teaching,” the report reads.

The proposal also requests a “University-wide initiative to facilitate and support research in all aspects of human evolution,” to be called the “Harvard Human Evolution Initiative.”

Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby said he was aware of the proposal, and said it would have to be approved by the Faculty Council and then the full Faculty before it goes into effect.

Reflecting the preliminary nature of the discussions, two members of the council contacted yesterday said that they had not heard of the proposal.

The possible division would not be unprecedented. In 1998, Stanford’s anthropology department divided into two­—anthropological sciences and cultural and social anthropology. And the anthropology departments of Princeton; the University of California, Berkeley; and the University of Chicago, among others, are already without biological anthropology tracks.

The core problem with Harvard’s department, the proposal argues, is its disparate nature.

“It is impossible for a single department structure to be broad enough to encompass the reality of what is now included in anthropology,” it reads.

Three professors in Harvard’s Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology—which is closely linked to biological anthropology—confirmed that the proposal had been made.

One of them, Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology David Haig, said he expects the department to split eventually along the lines suggested in the proposal.

“The anthropology department sort of functioned for quite some time as a loose federation of social anthropology, biological anthropology, and archeology,” Haig said. “So I think in some sense [the proposal] is just a recognition of the defect that exists in the Department of Anthropology.”

According to the report, the new department would use research in genetics and the evolution of humans, and their close relatives, to help explain “the genetic versus environmental underpinnings” of how people look, act, and function. The department would also study “what selective forces operated at different times in human evolution.”

Discussion of the structure of the HEB concentration is still ongoing, the report says, but it would combine the existing biological anthropology concentration with a series of courses in biology and other sciences. The new concentration would require 12 half-courses, rather than the 10 currently needed for a non-honors anthropology concentration.

The professor at yesterday’s meeting stressed the preliminary nature of the report.

“It’s a very real proposal,” the professor said, “but it’s nowhere near a fait accompli.”

—Staff writer Anton S. Troianovski can be reached at atroian@fas.harvard.edu.