Is Harry Lewis’ quest to raise the issue of morality at Harvard having an impact?

The Crimson yesterday called for the university to fire research-faking professor Marc Hauser.

The University should use the Hauser case to declare an end to the treatment of tenure as tantamount to faculty immunity. After all, peer institutions like Yale and Columbia have fired tenured faculty members for academic misconduct, and, as the Education School’s Cathy A. Trower told The Crimson during the eruption of the Hauser scandal this past fall, a 1994 study found that between 50 and 75 tenured professors are dismissed annually nationwide.

Why is Harvard so reluctant to do the same?

Why indeed?

The Crimson notes that the psychology department is prohibiting Hauser from teaching but allowing him to return to the lab.

I’m not sure I see the logic here. Isn’t that like giving a bank robber a job as a teller?

I’d suggest that the more powerful action would be to ban him from conducting research, but to allow him to teach—to throw him upon the mercy of the marketplace, as it were.

On the other hand, Harvard students have been known to prefer celebrity to morality….