Historian Named to Three Positions

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed has been appointed as a professor at Harvard Law School, a professor of History in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and will serve as the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Gordon-Reed, a 1984 graduate of the Law School, won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in history for her book, “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family,” which traces the lineage of four generations of a slave family descended from Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson.

Gordon-Reed will not begin teaching until the fall of 2011. She said she is not yet sure exactly how her time will be divided between the Law School and FAS. In addition, she said she hopes to teach both graduate and undergraduate students at FAS.

She is currently a professor at New York Law School.

Some time after the 2010-2011 academic year, she will conduct research as a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

According to Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Barbara J. Grosz, offering professorships at the institute is often used as a method of attracting tenured professors from other institutions.

Grosz said she met with Gordon-Reed after Dean of the Law School Martha L. Minow suggested her. “It was clear that there was a perfect fit between [Gordon-Reed] and Radcliffe,” Grosz said.

“Colleagues, students, and aspiring scholars rejoice over the chance to work with her as she deepens historical understanding of law, slavery, and the human experience,” Minow wrote in a Law School press release.

Grosz said Gordon-Reed’s position at the Radcliffe Institute will provide her with “a second home at which she can work across disciplines.”

Gordon-Reed said that though she is unsure of the exact scope of her research, she plans to continue work on her second volume about the Hemings family while at the Radcliffe Institute.

Grosz said she is sure Gordon-Reed’s research “absolutely will be on the frontiers of knowledge.”

Gordon-Reed, who said she plans to commute between New York City and Cambridge, said that she was drawn back to the Law School because of its familiarity. “I spent some of my most formative years at HLS,” she said.

She believes, she said, that the Law School retains many characteristics from when she was a student, but that the classes are smaller than they used to be and “the students are nicer to each other these days.”

—Staff Writer Zoe A. Y. Weinberg can be reached at zoe.weinberg@college.harvard.edu.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction and clarification:

CORRECTIONS: May 3, 2010

Due to an editing error, an earlier version of the May 3 news article "Historian Named to Three Positions" incorrectly stated that historian Annette Gordon-Reed is currently a professor at New York University Law School. In fact, she is a professor at New York Law School, and currently teaches at NYU Law School as a visiting professor.

Due to misinformation from a source, the article also stated that Gordon-Reed will conduct research as a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study next fall. In fact, she will be a Radcliffe fellow some time after the 2010-2011 academic year, according to Cheryl Klufio, public relations director of the Institute.