15 Professors of the Year
Marjorie Garber
" Teaching a course is a matter of trying to find out where students’ interests are and presenting the material so that it catches fire for them," says Marjorie Garber. "That’s the thrill of it and the risk of it."
Danielle S. Allen
Danielle Allen, one of the 15 Professors of 2017, has been trying to shift the conversation from inequality to equality.
Katherine Merseth
"I would say the big issue in education today is both equity and excellence," says Katherine Merseth. " I’m working to see if we can raise both excellence and equity. That is my life’s work."
Timothy P. McCarthy
"I march and I rally, but I also teach and write," Timothy P. McCarthy says. "I do a lot of things that are in service to a larger resistance. I’m never particularly willing to accept the status quo. I’ve always been a rebel, a protestor, a rabble rouser."
Jim Sidanius
Through his work at the Sidanius Lab, Jim Sidanius explores intersections of psychology and racism.
Charmaine Nelson
"I’m here at Harvard researching slavery in the regions that became Canada. The average Canadian doesn’t even realize transatlantic slavery happened in Canada," says Charmaine Nelson of her work. "Canadians got to that point through an erasure—we offload it onto the United States."
Jamaica Kincaid
These days, you'll probably find Jamaica Kincaid musing on Paradise Lost in her garden.
Shiv S. Pillai
"In science, you are never done," says Shiv S. Pillai. "There is always something that’s not finished. The only way to survive in this type of field is to really enjoy the stuff you do, and to have fun with whatever comes out of it. "
Joshua W. Buckholtz
"I have an opportunity to tell a bunch of people things that they can carry with them for the rest of their lives, and maybe make their lives and the lives of the people around them a little bit easier," says Joshua W. Buckholtz. "What more could a professor ask for?
Alex Krieger
For Alex Krieger, architecture is personal. "It’s kind of nice to know that you helped improve the well being of a bunch of people, whether it’s a health care building, or a promenade, or a modest center for a private school in Cambridge," he says.
Robert J. Wood
Wood also repeats many of the aphorisms typical of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs: He describes the ever-arching motivation for his work as the desire to design and build completely novel creations.
Ali S. Asani
Asani views religious and cultural literacy as essential to the project of democracy.
Daniel L. Shapiro
Shapiro has traveled around the world working to resolve identity-based conflicts, from ethnic wars in Yugoslavia to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Glenda R. Carpio
In her current work on immigrant literature, Carpio is interested in when “America fails the person or when the person can’t cope with the difficulties of becoming someone else."
Matthew J. Liebmann
Compared to many other archaeologists’ work investigating thousands of years into the past, Liebmann’s focus on the archaeology of early Native American encounters with Europeans is practically breaking news.
Brandon M. Terry
Now teaching at his alma mater just 15 years later—though “it feels longer every year,” he quips—Terry sees his role as a responsibility to push students outside of their comfort zones.
Dr. Shahram Khoshbin
Khoshbin thinks with both sides of his brain—a truism that he, as an award-winning neurologist, surely understands in greater depth than most of us ever could.
Nonie K. Lesaux
Much of Lesaux's work today involves implementing her research into policy in order to improve child education systems.
Peter L. Galison
Galison’s teaching, like his many projects, focuses on the historical, philosophical, and ethical implications of science.
Mark D. Jordan
Jordan is a leading expert on Christian sexuality and sexual ethics, and has written on topics from sexual abuse within the Catholic clergy to religious same-sex unions.