Faculty Council Passes New Bio Department

To accommodate the disparity in academic focus between the human evolutionary biology concentration within anthropology and the rest of the department, the Faculty Council—the 18-member governing body of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences—passed a proposal yesterday to make human evolutionary biology a separate department.

Under the plan, the anthropology department—which currently offers concentrations in human evolutionary biology and anthropology, with three separate tracks—would divide into two separate departments.

The human evolutionary biology concentration offered by the anthropology department is essentially a life science with some elements of the social sciences—making it profoundly different from the archaeology and social anthropology tracks within the anthropology concentration, according to anthropology professor Daniel E. Lieberman ’86.

“What we do, the questions we ask, the techniques we use, the issues we ponder...are so divergent from those of our colleagues in anthropology,” said Lieberman, a professor in the biological anthropology division. “It no longer makes any sense to be in the same department...It’s come to a point where we don’t really share much in common with our colleagues.”

The administrative complexity and the differences in academic interest has made the formation of the human evolutionary biology department the “logical conclusion” to about five years of discussion—but not much is changing, Lieberman said.

“The administrative structure is the thing that’s changing,” he said, emphasizing that the formation of the department will not cause any changes in concentration requirements. Sweeping changes would be difficult in the current financial climate, anyway, he said.

With the requisite student interest, the biological anthropology track within the anthropology concentration will still be offered, Lieberman said.

The proposal still awaits the vote of the full Faculty in May for official recognition of the new department in July.

If approved, the department in human evolutionary biology will continue its study of the evolutionary development of humans to address problems such as obesity and diabetes by focusing on areas like behavioral biology, genetics, and physiology.

—Staff writer Esther I. Yi can be reached at estheryi@fas.harvard.edu.