Caroline Hoxby in the Wall Street Journal
Posted on June 15th, 2007 in Uncategorized | 78 Comments »
The Wall Street Journal reports on the departure of Blair and Caroline Hoxby for Stanford.
Aside from a sunnier clime, Stanford offered Ms. Hoxby the attractive lure of a tenured position for her husband, Blair Hoxby â something that Harvard, where Mr. Hoxby taught history and literature, had failed to do.
….In an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education, Ms. Hoxby, 41, said the tenure offer had helped clinch the deal. She said she and the Harvard economics department had made various attempts to give the university a chance to keep her, but that âthere is a sense in which no one is in chargeâ at the venerable institution.
Here’s the most relevant part of that interview:
Ms. Hoxby, who is 41, joined Harvard’s economics department in 1994. Her chairman tried hard to keep her, she said, but she never heard from anyone in the administration. She even telephoned Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard’s incoming president, to let her know the couple was about to leave, but nothing happened, Ms. Hoxby said.
Hoxby’s is a profound criticism: There is no one in charge at Harvard. Is it true? Is Harvard a little, well, adrift?
78 Responses
6/15/2007 7:55 am
Absolutely correct. There is no one in charge right now; no one with deep institutional memory; and no one who cares about faculty committed to undergraduate education. Fasten your seat belts-there’s more coming down the pike.
6/15/2007 9:11 am
Surely the Provost and the former FAS Dean will explain that the Wall Sreet Journal is mistaken. This is not a problem of Drew Faust making, since she is not yet the President. This is something that those in charge over the last year could have prevented and, now that they are aware that the Hoxbys may leave, they surely will.
6/15/2007 9:54 am
Isn’t the real back story that there was room for only one new Renaissance scholar in the English Dept, and Steve Greenblatt’s wife has to get that position so HE won’t leave?? I am not an authority here, but I have heard it a couple of times, and I am posting it in the hope that someone better informed can confirm or deny it.
6/15/2007 10:02 am
Hypocrisy is the homage,
That expediency pays to principle.
Old Yiddish Proverb
Let me see if I have this right. Drew Faust (and/or Steve Hyman) was supposed to prevent the Hoxbys from leaving for Stanford. If the incoming President (or outgoing President) had been able to find a place for Blair Hoxby all would have been fine. At the same time, as Iâve seen from many posts on many topics during the last year, the argument has been strenuously made that there has been too much interference on the part of Mass Hall in the affairs that belong to the FAS. Each tub on its own bottom has been extended to mean that the forces in Mass Hall meddle too much in the affairs of University Hall. In fact, going beyond that for a second, it has been argued that The Dean of The FAS should be careful very careful about meddling in the affairs of departments. That has been the gist of many of the faculty who post here⦠be very careful about telling us who to hire and what to do.
What would be the reaction if The President of Harvard wanted to name a tenured professor of sociology and the Chair and members of that department did not want that person associated with the department, even if that personâs salary were carried by Mass Hall? Would there be mass rejoicing or despair? The castigation of Larry Summers and Steve Hyman for exerting too much control over various parts of The FAS went on (and continues to go on) unabated.
It might be interesting to hear from some of the faculty in the English Department with regard to the topic at hand (there is anonymity here so donât be shy). What if Drew Faust and/or Steve Hyman had come to the department and said⦠we need to grant tenure to Professor Blair Hoxby in order to retain Professor Caroline Hoxby. What would be the reaction if the department (and particularly the Chair), did not want to grant tenure to Professor Hoxby? What would be the reaction if The President or The Provost tried to force the issue? Do The Dean of The FAS and the individual FAS departments want Mass Hall to tell them what to do or not?
Sam Spektor
6/15/2007 10:04 am
Wall Street Journal was not mistaken. English Department has plenty of positions, esp. now that Targoff did not get tenure. So be prepared for another departure.
6/15/2007 10:08 am
This is the first time I’ve heard any talk about granting tenure to Stephen Greenblatt’s wife. There may have been a question, though, about how many Renaissance scholars are needed to change the lightbulbs at Harvard.
6/15/2007 11:04 am
FAS departments tend to be much more receptive to presidential bright ideas about faculty appointments when they come with incremental slots. This is a method Summers used to get departmental approval for some of his favorite outsiders, and I’ll bet it’s the method Stanford president Hennessy uses. For the right appointee, it works, and the level of grumbling is quite low.
6/15/2007 12:04 pm
Excellent points, Sam, and well put.
6/15/2007 12:24 pm
Sam Spektor:
Why do you ask these questions as hypothetical? Larry Summers and Steve Hyman did what you describe, effectively, numerous times.
Most recently Steve Hyman intervened to retain a Professor in the School of Public Health doing exactly what you describe. Incidentally, the circumstances in that case were very close to those of Caroline Hoxby.
Shouldn´t the questions then be, not what would have happened, but why did Mass Hall intervene in the ways you describe for some professors and not for others?
6/15/2007 12:32 pm
What would a jury decide faced with the question of whether Harvard University discriminated against Professor Caroline Hoxby when it treated her in much less favorable terms than some of her peers were treated in very similar circumstances faced by the same Harvard administrators at exactly the same time?
6/15/2007 12:34 pm
people may be overestimating how well liked Hoxby is within her own department
6/15/2007 12:41 pm
The office of the general counsel is already looking into the question asked above. So far there is concern regarding the potential damage this case could cause the University. It could potentially make the Schleiffer Affair look like children´s play.
6/15/2007 12:45 pm
Steve Hyman had nothing to do with this, he only learned about this story when he read it in the Crimson.
This is something that fall squarely on Theda Skocpol. Only she knows why she failed to inform Steve that this was going on under her watch.
Perhpas she was too busy campaigning to be Dean to pay attention to issues like this.
6/15/2007 12:46 pm
To Anon 12:24.
I’d be happy to give you my opinion to the questions you raised, if I knew whom I were addressing.
Sam Spektor
6/15/2007 12:47 pm
C.H. and S.H. are not co-ethnics. Isn´t that the simple answer to the questions raised here?
6/15/2007 12:51 pm
What would Theda Skocpol have to do with a tenure issue in the English and economics departments? She was GSAS dean, not FAS dean…..
And Sam S., it seems to me there’s a difference between meddling and brokering a compromise, and that there is plenty of precedent for presidents working with departments to find ways to retain faculty the university wants to retain.
Now, there’s a suggestion belowâcompletely without supporting evidenceâthat the econ department didn’t really want to retain Caroline Hoxby, but that runs counter to everything I’ve ever heard.
I have heard the rumor about Stephen Greenblatt wanting his wife to be hired, but I freely admit it’s just a rumor (as far as I know) and so I can’t really speak to it.
But I’m inclined to think that there’s no nefarious conspiracy hereâjust a vacuum in leadership. One president leaving, one president coming, a tricky situation that required some focus to resolve…things fall through the cracks.
The real question is, Is this sort of thing happening elsewhere around the university, and if so, with what frequency?
6/15/2007 1:02 pm
you are too generous Richard. Caroline and Blair have been pondering this over 2 years. Do you mean there was noone at the helm during that period?
6/15/2007 1:04 pm
a more accurate way to assess 12.47 implication is to determine how many of the cases in which SH did do what he failed to do for CH involved co-ethnics…
6/15/2007 1:38 pm
1:04, I’m uncomfortable with the way you’re presenting your suggestion, especially the term “co-ethnics.” I’m guessing Steve Hyman is Jewish, so you’re essentially saying that Hyman favored Jewish professors over African-American ones. That’s a strong and ugly charge, which may be why you’re not just coming out and saying so, and in any case it sounds highly improbable to me. It’s significant that Harvard lost an African-American woman economist, but there’s nothing to indicate that race actually hurt the Hoxby’s standing.There’s no evidence that race or ethnicity played into this episode at all, so unless you can provide some, it seems irresponsible to inject race into the discussion.
6/15/2007 2:04 pm
Now that this issue has made the WSJ and the Globe it would be helpful to prevent further damage. Evelyn Hammond should be tasked with chairing an internal committee to study what happened here. Maybe include Peter Gomes and Alan Counter in the committee.
6/15/2007 2:09 pm
It’s threads like this one where this blog really seems to serve a valuable purpose.
6/15/2007 2:23 pm
http://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Man-Ralph-Ellison/dp/0679732764
6/15/2007 2:24 pm
The Chronicle of Higher Education is preparing an in-depth story on this. The Corporation should asked to be briefed on this matter soon, before there is more dama to Harvard.
6/15/2007 2:52 pm
It must be exhausting going through life seeing absolutely everything in the universe as either a positive or negative reaction to race and ethnicity (and, of course, only the latter is worth discussion to these same folks).
6/15/2007 3:22 pm
The post by 12:45 trying to blame Theda Skocpol for a TENURE CASE IN ENGLISH really takes the cake. What are these pusilanimous administrators in UHALL/MASS Hall going to do when they dont have her to blame anymore (and no, this is not Theda writing) and can’t deflect criticism of their own action and inaction? I cant wait to see, frankly. The darwinian struggle will really be in full sway then and we can watch these folks consume each other till there ain’t nothing left……Im sorely tempted to name these deanlets in uhall who are responsible but it is far better to let them self-destruct as they will inevitably do. The critical question is how much damage they will do to the university in the interim.
6/15/2007 3:53 pm
I think it speaks to the lack of other news/gossip at the moment that so many posters here are blowing this up into some kind of major scandal. Is it a blow to Harvard to lose a high profile professor? Of course it is. Will it “make the Schleiffer [sic] Affair look like children´s play, as per 12:41pm? With all due respect: you’re out of your mind. This kind of thing happens to universities all the time.
The real question here is: what narrative is this going to contribute to? Is it going to be part of the “Harvard rudderless/Faust weak” story? Part of the “Harvard continues Summers’ legacy of being indifferent to diversity concerns” story? Perhaps some other one. For good or ill, the storyline this ends up contributing to will probably be more important than the facts of the matter about why the Hoxbys left, which may be entirely innocuous.
6/15/2007 3:54 pm
Could it be a Harvard/Yale tension at work? And I mean this in the sense of the different cultures and interests of the English departments. Both Blair Hoxby and Ramie Targoff had early teaching appointments at Yale (and have degrees from Yale, Targoff’s is a BA and Hoxby’s is a PhD).
I suggest this a bit tongue ‘n cheek, but the work of both seems more in keeping with a Yale English approach in its Renaissance/Early Modern scholars (historicist, historicist, historicist!-and not shy of treating vital, but sometimes heavy going political and religious controversies and involutions), than a Harvard approach, to the extent there is one.
Also, from a Yale perspective, where Renaissance rules, it seems odd to think that a department could ever have TOO MANY Renaissance scholars! I doubt that would be a concern at Harvard either, which is surely a department large enough to absord some extras. I’d be more interested in how far along their second books are.
While the Hoxbys’ departure is a loss for Harvard, I have to think that a certain amount of jockeying about from one institution to another is simply how the process works. I’m not sure it is a good thing that universities like Harvard are expected to throw money, perks, positions at certain annointed scholars, doing whatever it takes to keep them. That is certainly done in humanities departments only with the starriest of the stars (e.g. Greenblatt) and doesn’t define the culture. It’s far from the norm: and I think that’s perhaps a good thing, especially when I look over to other disciplines (some of the sciences, for example, and perhaps economics, too), where the annointed stars seem to ascend to a different playing field altogether.
Former Bulldog
(just glad to have made it to junior varsity)
6/15/2007 3:57 pm
I agree with 12:34 (that people are overstating how much she is liked in the department). It seems to be the assumption that C Hoxby really wanted to stay at Harvard but couldn’t. I don’t think this is necessarily true. There is a good chance she wanted to go to Stanford - my understanding is that she has a fair share of people in the Harvard ec department who do not love her. They certainly respect her but just don’t get along with her.
Let’s not forget she is a very smart economist and could easily have been hiding her true preferences in order to get better offers from both sides (Harvard, Stanford).
6/15/2007 6:02 pm
It seems pretty obvious that there wasnt enough support in English for her husband and that the university administrators were not keen enough on retaining her to make something work. Is this so hard to figure out? And yes, the university has absolutely thrown its standards out the window in the past in just such a situation to retain a faculty member it wants to keep and conversely has many times before failed to act. So…yes, it is business as usual. That said, there is nothing “innocuous” about it—this is a very accomplished African American woman economist and it is a loss for Harvard. She cant be replaced. And Harvard doesnt have such a hot record that it can just shrug and say oh well in losing this professor….unless, of course, they dont believe what they claim to believe about recruiting and retaining minorities etc.
6/15/2007 6:04 pm
For the past two years, the Hoxbys have explored every possible avenue to stay at Harvard. Thus the idea that they were merely fishing to jack up the Stanford offer isn’t credible. And while it may be true that as a critic of Summers, Caroline ruffled some feathers in the Ec Department, economists are very practical people. Caroline is a superstar, a stunning teacher, and an African American; they wanted to keep her, and their chair worked hard to that end. It’s the administration that failed here. Drew Faust could have made a difference, not by “meddling”, but by getting this issue to the top of people’s agenda at a time when lots of things have been falling through the cracks, but she apparently wasn’t prepared to expend any political capital to do so. Reportedly, she didn’t even return phone calls. Evelyn Hammond, who holds a senior post on diversity in the central administration to, among other things, deal with exactly this kind of issue, apparently played no role. Meanwhile, the FAS administration collectively put their finger in their ear and said again and again that nothing could be done. The proliferation of deanlets during the Summers-Kirby era has left no one in charge. Give English not only a free FTE for Blair, but an extra new junior post to fill? Expensive, but Harvard spent multimillions to save Shleifer’s goose. And the English Department wasn’t the only possible solution. A senior research post at the Radcliffe Institute? Drew could have created this and then asked for only a courtesy appointment in English for Blair. A tenured post with the undergrad concentration, History and Literature? Heaven only knows the concentration needs leadership, and Blair would have been a perfect fit. Non-departmental concentrations at Harvard at the moment don’t give tenure, but why not? Or, why not make an exception? We are looking at a gross failure of imagination and leadership.
6/15/2007 6:13 pm
6:04: convincing post! thank you.
6/15/2007 6:57 pm
6:04 has absolutely nailed it. There is a vacuum in moral leadership and imagination and I am sorry to say that Drew Faust isnt going to fill it. Yes, yes, give her a chance. But guess what? She has already demonstrated her style and the phone calls left unreturned, if the post is accurate, the lack of directness and ability to take matters in hand, the evasion of responsibility, the lip service to lofty goals and the failure to execute them in concrete terms are and will continue to be the coin of the realm. Her supporters will natter on about how great it is all going to be….but it isnt going to be. I wish it were otherwise.
6/15/2007 7:35 pm
Here, here 6:04. A little imagination could have gone a long way. And the silence from Mass Hall / University Hall is deafening.
6/16/2007 9:30 am
The 6:04 post is absolutely correct, both in its analysis of what happened and its suggestions about other solutions that could have been proposed. Hear, hear!
6/16/2007 10:15 am
Have you considered the possibility that the English Department might have made a good faith effort to make the case for appointing the spouse but failed because his publication record is insufficient. His second project is still a manuscript, and outside scholars who might be asked to comment would have to say that there is not enough to judge. I am not aware of any recent promotions or appointments in FAS where the publication record was so limited. Harvard and Yale (which could have moved to recruit both but didnt) are the top ranked English departments. Stanford is not, and is known for compromising its appointment procedures to make spousal appointments. You could argue that Stanford’s policy is preferable especially when the case involves a major African American scholar. That is a reasonable position, and might even be right. But that is the real substantive question here-a matter of policy or how far to extend such a policy of spousal recruitment. Not whether the administration acted or failed to act. There may be a vacuum at the top but this case does not show that there is. Yes, Faust should have returned the phone call.
6/16/2007 10:26 am
I was waiting for someone to engage in a bit of race-baiting when it comes to this particular issue. Sad thing is, race wasn’t an issue, and nothing I’ve heard suggests the office of General Counsel is looking into this issue, let along having been approached about it at all.
6/16/2007 11:47 am
There are plenty of cases where the publication record was FAR more limited. Yale/Harvard is apples and oranges. Harvard was trying to retain a brilliant senior woman scholar and teacher who is a huge institutional asset in many ways. How about some administrative creativity and institutional solidarity-isn’t that what deans are supposed to do?
6/16/2007 11:52 am
10:15 AM sounds about right on this-despite the acclaim received by 6:04 PM and supporters. Sometimes it’s just not necessary to resort to conspiracy theories. For someone to be appointed to tenure in the Humanities at Harvard, two books that have achieved broad resonance in the field would normally be the standard. A department would not be in a good position if it tried to put someone up for tenure if he or she did not yet have strong outside recognition.
6/16/2007 11:54 am
Have you been to the Registry of Motor Vehicles lately?
6/16/2007 5:25 pm
Hey 11:52-wake up and smell the roses. Drew Faust’s own department is full of people who dont have second books, despite the much vaunted standard of two monographs for tenure….and that would include the former dean of the faculty. It is also the home of a couple of spousal hires to retain faculty. So surely the president elect is familiar with the process-
6/16/2007 5:38 pm
Thank you 5:25. That was the point of my Seinfeld line in case anyone didn’t get it.
6/16/2007 9:16 pm
It’s odd that no one has commented on the controversy that engulfed Caroline Hoxby’s research in the last couple of years-or her outspokenness about Summers having to offer her a University Professorship. Both created some waves within FAS.
6/16/2007 9:37 pm
Why did Harvard owe Blair Hoxby a tenured position to keep his wife if he was not worthy in the eyes of the relevant department? Are there not several other universities within easy commuting distance of Cambridge with outstanding English departments. If Harvard were in Dubuque this might be a real issue but in this case it’s a strawman.
6/16/2007 10:02 pm
No one OWES anyone anything. Academic hiring is competitive, a game of strategy, not an exercise of obligation. Stanford made one calculation and Harvard made another (or made Hennessy made one and Summers/Kirby/Bok/Knowles/Pilbeam/Faust/Hyman made none, because no one who gave a damn was ever in charge). You may want to suggest that Stanford lost the game by winding up with both Hoxbys, but I and others tend to think that Harvard lost by winding up with neither. Of course the husband could have wound up at Wellesley or someplace like that, but the married couple thought that for the their joint purposes, two Stanford offers were better than Harvard plus a place lesser than either Harvard or Stanford. Professionally they may be right or they may be wrong, and there is no way to know how much their commuting marriage has left them wanting to work within minutes of each other. But the question here is which UNIVERSITY won, not whether anybody got what they were “owed.”
6/17/2007 1:12 am
To return to Richard’s original question, Harvard isn’t adrift; it appears to be sailing the same ill-advised course that the Corporation and Summers charted. Unless and until the Corporation has a change of heart and the leftovers from the Summers administration are replaced, Faust may not be able to repair the damage that Summers has done (assuming that she considers what has happened to be damage).
6/17/2007 5:00 am
Too many deanlets.
6/17/2007 8:09 am
The deanlets are indeed a problem-but mostly because they are symptomatic of weakness and a lack of vision/moral leadership at the top.
6/17/2007 8:17 am
Do you think the new people at the top, notably the incoming FAS Dean, will be able to improve the deanlet problem?
6/17/2007 8:29 am
The clear winners here appear to be the Hoxbys. If, as a result of their move to Stanford, they have a happier life together, perhaps even blessed with children, there is nothing that could top that.
It is too bad Harvard can not understand and be responsive to the reality that some faculty -and administrators- have loving relationships and would like to be happy in them. It is also sad that, in the poor management of this situation, Harvard chose to reinforce for undergraduate and graduate students, a set of priorities that devalue the importance of family, children and parenting.
It is likely that commuting the way the Hoxbys have for so long would put some stressors on any marriage, and perhaps make having children very difficult. By chosing happiness they are setting a wonderful example to their many fans, including the many student who respect and admire them both.
Basic family values have become so distorted at Harvard that most people there impose huge burdens on their families to serve Harvard’s demands. The ideal Harvard professor or top administrator appears to be single, a divorce or someone who does not give a damn about their spouse or children, if they have them.
There are professors at Harvard who advise their students who want to go into academia NOT to have children until they get tenure and NOT to make decisions based on their marriages until they get tenure. I know also of female doctoral students at Harvard who become deeply traumatized when they get pregnant because they believe their professors will rule them out as not serious about their academic careers. Some choose abortions for the same reasons.
The way in which the Harvard administration responded to the reality that one of its star professors was living a situation that would put any marriage under stress, and would make having children impossible, is fully consistent with the prevailing values of the institution.
It is a good thing the Hoxbys understood how wrong these values are and chose happiness. Perhaps as more Universities do what Hennesy made possible for the Hoxbys there will be a growing divide between two classes of Universities, those where happy and balanced people pursue excellence, and those where excellence is achieved at the expense of one’s humanity. There is a way in which much of the insanity at Harvard over the last years is reflective of a very unhappy place, where maybe too many people gave up their humanity too long ago.
Parents should think carefully about which Universities they want their children to go to, and which kind of role models they want their children to have. It is still possible for youth to learn to excell and to be happy, but maybe not at Harvard.
6/17/2007 8:31 am
The new FAS Dean will probably improve the situation. He has a happy marriage and young children and has managed to live a very balanced personal life. Drew made an excellent choice in appointing him. But notice how many of his peers and the Harvard administrators jumped over him, he does not fit the mold of the unhappy workaholics who rule the place.
If Drew manages to make more appointments like Smith perhaps she can begin to revert the very sick situation of the place.
6/17/2007 8:54 am
It’s odd to me that happiness is measured as marriage + children. I know plenty of single parents who lead happy, fulfilled lives, plenty of married folks who are miserable, lots of people with children who are floundering, and people without children who lead wonderful lives. That a dean is married with children means absolutely nothing and is not at all a predictor of his style. Most adults know better than to draw conclusions about peoples’ lives by looking at their marital status and the number of offspring.
6/17/2007 11:48 am
I wonder how much Blair Hoxby’s role as a Hist & Lit lecturer contributed to English department’s response (or lack thereof)? Sure, the H&L committee is stacked with English stars and the two immediate past chairs (Bhabba and Greenblatt) were tenured English faculty, but my observation is there’s an unspoken elitism at work with tutor-based, non-department undergraduate concentrations. Lecturers are sometimes seen as bright people with Harvard ties who couldn’t get jobs elsewhere or who couldn’t hack the faculty route. BH gave up a job at Yale for the post — and as great as H&L is for the students, maybe he didn’t knw what he’d be getting into. Harvard’s dirty adjunct secret. Has someone who started as a H&L lecturer (or Social Studies, for that matter) ever been granted faculty status?
6/17/2007 4:08 pm
8.54, you seem to be unable to follow the logic of the argument. Of course there are unmarried people and people without children who are happy. That’s not the point. The point is that if the prevailing norms at Harvard prevent those who also value marriage and children to rise to the top, the result will be a set of senior administrators and faculty that is not representative of the student body, of the wider population or of the situation in other universities.
Whether having such a biased group lead the University is good or bad depends on what one values. There are some who think that it is in the interest of the University to have women on the faculty, for example, both for the benefit of male and female students and of the nature of the research they pursue. Similarly there are some who think it is beneficial to have faculty of different racial groups.
For those who think Harvard is a richer place by having a top notch scientist like Caroline Hoxby on the faculty, who is also a woman and an African American, her departure makes Harvard a poorer place in which to be. For the same reasons, Stanford is now a richer place in which to be.
The leadership of both universities is reflected in how they manage their institution to become richer or poorer.
6/17/2007 5:21 pm
Some people are making a lot of assumptions about the Hoxbys. All we know is that they would like to be together. As far as I know, they haven’t said a thing about children. Whatever their thoughts on this matter, they are surely their own business and nobody else’s.
6/18/2007 8:20 pm
From Monday’s edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education.
PEER REVIEW
Harvard Economist Jumps to Stanford; Provost Is Picked as New Mexico’s Higher-Ed Secretary
By SIERRA MILLMAN, ROBIN WILSON, and ELYSE ASHBURN
FOLLOW THROUGH? Every year, Harvard University issues reports on how many female professors it has tried to hire, and how many women have accepted its offers. It has also put out two well-publicized reports on what the university can do to attract and hang on to female faculty members who are already there.
But the university has just lost one of its top-ranked African-American female scholars, who says Harvard did very little to try to keep her.
Caroline M. Hoxby is leaving Harvard’s economics department for Stanford University this fall, along with her husband, Blair G. Hoxby, an associate professor at Harvard. The English department declined to consider offering tenure to Mr. Hoxby this spring, and that helped clinch the couple’s decision to leave for Stanford, which has been trying to woo them for three years…
6/19/2007 8:40 am
What can the English Department have been thinking? Well….
from a bio through Yale:
Special Interests/Authors: Blair Hoxby … is particularly interested in the cultural effects of Early Modern Europe’s transition to an economy based on long-distance trade and increasingly sophisticated credit relationships. In Mammon’s Music: Literature and Economics in the Age of Milton (Yale University Press, 2002), he argues that the commercial revolution of the seventeenth[] century deeply changed English culture and caused English literary history to swerve. Among other things, he documents how arguments against monopolies and in favor of free trade gave rise to a more expansive conception of liberty that included freedom of speech and liberty of conscience and how a growing recognition of the importance of trade to the polity forced a re-conceptualization of such genres as the epic, topographical verse, panegyric, and the royal entry. … In his course Commerce and Culture in Early Modern Europe, Hoxby offers a more sweeping look at the influence of commerce on Early Modern culture, from fourteenth-century Florence and Venice to seventeenth-century Amsterdam and London.
Hoxby is now writing a book entitled Baroque Tragedy: Passion and Performance in the Seventeenth Century. It traces the transmission of a new style of dramaturgy that emerged in Italy in the late sixteenth century, one that made use of elongated theaters, moveable sets, and a musical style of recitation that was intended to affect audiences as Greek tragedy was said to have moved the passions of the ancients. It argues that this style of dramaturgy developed into a pan-European, baroque theater of the passions, a theater that cannot be understood without reference to the scenes, machines, dances, and music that played such a crucial role in the creation of the audience’s experience. Among the many practitioners of the baroque theater of the passions were Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, John Dryden, and such opera composers as Monteverdi, Lully, Charpentier, Purcell, and Rameau.
As fascinating and thoroughgoingly germane as this might be (and indeed, I can say with some confidence that every year at Harvard there is enrolled one or two kids who fit the description of Hoxby’s first book’s blurb: “it will be essential reading for Miltonists, scholars of the seventeenth century generally and anyone interested in the relationship between literature and economic thought in the early modern period”), an awfully small fraction of this work is focused on literature in English. Comp Lit makes sense, but Hist and Lit makes more — and indeed it seems that’s where he’s been.
SE
6/19/2007 8:45 am
Thanks for englithening us Standing Eagle. You are suggesting that this guy is doing something utterly uninteresting. The logical conclusion is that Harvard has obviously, as usual, made the right choice. Let Stanford suffer by having to put up with him and with his wife.
6/19/2007 8:53 am
Standing Eagle, what are your thoughts on the efforts Larry Summers made to retain Andrei Shleiffer on the Harvard Faculty?
As you probably know Summers is a co-author on many papers with Shleiffer, do you have views on whether that may have played a role in his efforts on his behalf?
6/19/2007 8:55 am
Not uninteresting, intrinsically, just not expanding the reach of what literary study does — and certainly not doing so in ways that are amenable to Harvard’s quite conservative (in the old sense*) English Department.
Also, not in English.
Just think those facts are relevant before people go off on some trumped-up thing about personalities or identities. If there’s a conflict on the BH side of this, it’s an intellectual one.
SE
* In the case of English Departments my sense is that ‘conservatism’ means a focus on texts over contexts — unless you’re redefining the relationship between the two, as Stephen Greenblatt did.
6/19/2007 11:01 am
“What are your thoughts on the efforts Larry Summers made to retain Andrei Shleiffer on the Harvard Faculty?”
I don’t have any. There was some excellent journalism around the time that Summers’s departure began to percolate in earnest. It was unsettling to some but I didn’t look closely into it.
Can’t remember the name of the journal that had the story.
What’s the relevance? Seems like there’s nothing on your mind but repeatedly digging up the guy and re-executing him.
SE
6/19/2007 2:19 pm
The relevance? you might think that the errors of Andrei’s wife cost Harvard some 30 million, and little positive return. Blair has not cost nearly as much, and has given quite a bit in return, wouldn’t you say? See the connection?
6/19/2007 2:54 pm
No.
6/19/2007 4:36 pm
If an outstanding Professor such as Andrei is worth a University that bends over backward to retain him, maybe another outstanding Professor such as Caroline deserves the same thing. It shouldn’t take a friendship with the President to receive similar treatment.
As far as Andrei is concerned perhaps his wife made some miscalculations that embarrassed the University. And perhaps Blair is not as brilliant as his wife. I see some parallels between those situations, except that nothing the Hoxbys have done yet has involved Harvard in litigation with the Government.
6/19/2007 5:09 pm
But Andrei’s wife did not receive tenure at Harvard.
6/19/2007 5:14 pm
How does the cost of tenuring Blair Hoxby compare to the costs caused by the lawsuit over the Shleifers? At max, the present value of a tenured appointment is 10% of the costs of the settlement and 5-8% of the direct costs of the lawsuit. Not valuing the costs caused by bad press to Harvard and assuming zero returns from Blair’s teaching.
So, how much more valuable to Harvard is Andrei than Caroline to justify consideration 10-13 times greater? Or are these the returns of friendship?
6/19/2007 5:25 pm
Of course friendships and being sociable pay off. It’s clear that A.S. had ample support among his peers and with the then President. it takes effort to earn that support and he was smart to do it.
It appears that C.H. did not enjoy the same levels of support from the President or from her peers, so she faced different incentives.
It’s pure rational choice and behavioral economics. All quite clear.
6/19/2007 5:30 pm
As long as the different treatment is a pure function of different value of the scholars, their smarts or their effort, that’s all good.
It’s when things like gender or race come into play that differences in treatment are unacceptable. No one has proven so far that those factors played any role here.
6/19/2007 8:14 pm
Are you guys always caricatures of yourselves like this or do you sometimes dial it down a smidge?
Let me see if I can make the point of my initial post in response to the news about the English Dept’s role any clearer….
IS it all about behavioral economics? Some very smart people think so. Some others think it’s all about the hokey-pokey. But in the English Department there are relatively few who think it’s all about behavioral economics. (Had he joined the department, Blair Hoxby would not have become the first one to think it’s all about economics, since even he believes economics is interesting for what it reveals and undergirds in our ideas of human dignity and agency, as handled best in the complexities of literary writing.)
Whatever else they believe about their decisions, the members of the English Department can be counted on to believe that some very large fraction of their thinking about what they do should be neither about economics nor about sociology nor even about neurology, but rather ABOUT ENGLISH.
They may define that field in different ways (and it probably could be defined to include theatrical traditions emerging from barooque Italy). But it’s one of the essential features of an academic institution that its intellectual constituents are the only ones entitled to make decisions about what is researched and taught in their disciplines.
This notion that Harvard as a whole can be regarded as a macro-version of homo economicus, smoothly balancing an array of perfectly fungible and quantifiable values at every decision point, is significantly dumber than the idea of homo economicus itself, and it makes a shambles of the idea of a university.
It’s almost as intellectually bankrupt as the legal fiction that a corporation is a person.
It may not be true in society generally that some values are incommensurate with others, or that not everything has a quantifiable price. But that belief is the founding mythos of all universities worth the name. The English Department does not tell the Economics Department that someone’s beautiful prose style makes them a must-hire, and the Economics Department does not provide decision matrices and flowcharts with amortized values to govern hiring decisions in the Barker Center.
Call this system of Chinese walls an anachronism, a bureaucratic nightmare, or what you will; it’s the defining feature of a place where intellectuals work, and neither Larry Summers nor anyone else leading the school would consciously undermine it. The cost of Blair Hoxby’s tenure, in today’s dollars, is not a factor for the school in the way that the Schleiffer cash is. It’s just incommensurate with the stuff that goes into a departmental decision. (And don’t come back with talk about FTEs in the Department; the reality is that these are treated by departments as slots, not as cash outlays, and the number of slots is decided on high. A slot goes to someone when they win the contest for it; and they win on a kind of scoring system that isn’t negotiable in ducats.)
Lord willing, most of the people reading this don’t actually need this stuff explained at such length.
Standing Eagle
6/19/2007 9:11 pm
Standing Eagle, you make yourself exceedingly clear. Your arguments are also very persuasive.
In addition, it is quite possible that Caroline Hoxby’s marginal value to her Department and thus to the University is already reflected in what Harvard has shown it is willing to pay for her, and this price does not include a University Professorship, nor a Professorship for her husband.
Shleiffer’s marginal value is irrelevant here and should not be used as a comparison. We must presume too that his price -including the 30 million- reflects his value to his Department.
Assessing the academic value of a scholar is indeed an imperfect art, but if there is one area on which Larry Summers was well qualified to make judgements about the value of what members of the faculty contributed to their disciplines it was precisely the dismal science practiced by Andrei and Caroline. He was obviously implicated in setting the price for both of them and he was also obviously well fit to do it.
Let’s drop this subject and move on to other topics and wish the Hoxby’s well as they go west as young people should.
6/19/2007 9:37 pm
Imperfect art it must be since Stanford seems willing to set their price so differently. Why do you think this is? Presumably the value of a scholar’s contribution is not sensitive to whether they work in Cambridge or Palo Alto, is it?
6/19/2007 9:43 pm
In Palo Alto, at least, the Hoxby’s will be able to enjoy pleasant strolls out at night to grab a bite without fear of the criminal violence that has now surged in Harvard Square:
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=519267
6/20/2007 12:56 am
If I had ever needed convincing that Harvard has become a toxic atmosphere, this strand of comments would do the job.
Here we have a full display of the nastiness and ignorance that have become so common at Harvard. We now have people who’ve never read a word of the scholarship setting themselves up as a tenure committee. We also have people concluding that, if they see people treated badly, those people must deserve it regardless of their record of teaching and research.
Who would want to work in this abusive place? I’d jump ship too.
6/20/2007 11:14 pm
Standing Eagle has it completely right.
Although there are certainly cases in which elite universities find ways to accommodate couples when their attractiveness to separate departments, or to the university as a whole, differs in degree, it should be always with the agreement of the department that is being asked to accommodate the spouse.
Yes, sometimes extra incentives are offered and accepted because the department feels comfortable with the hire when extra resources are promised. (Very possibly this was the case at Stanford as one blogger said.) But at other times the second department simply does not find the spouse in question-who might be around for as long as thirty five years-an appropriate intellectual or personal fit in a multitude of possible ways too numerous to describe or list in such a forum. And if the spouse is forced on the department despite this, there can be unfortunate ramifications for everyone-the department, and the scholar himself or herself.
Trust me, many approaches, administrative and otherwise, were likely made to the Harvard English department to persuade its faculty to do what was necessary to keep the Hoxbys. (The department must have had its hands full IF as people suggest they were also considering Professor Targoff at the same time.) The fact that Hoxby did not get tenure does not necessarily mean the administration did not try. Things are always more nuanced and complex than they appear.
And how do you think that department would feel if the brand new not-even-yet president of the university raised the phone (and by the way how do you know she did not?) and tried to make a deal, or even to force the issue, against the wishes of the department? This is exactly the kind of thing that Larry Summers tried to do during his entire tenure— to impose his will on departments, to attempt to FORCE them to do things his way. Any effort in that direction by Drew Faust would be as if she were holding up a red flag to a bull before she even got started. Caught in the middle, she might well have learned her lesson from the Larry Summers debacle: Hands Off department business. Persuasion, yes. Help when needed, of course. Force, never.
Painful as it is to lose people of stature, you MUST listen to your professors, because you have placed your intellectual trust in them and because not to do so leads often to a worse institutional situation that also can have professional and personal ramifications for all the people involved. When it is your own appointment to make, you can go counter to the advice of a department, if you have the leadership and support to do so. But you cannot force a department’s decision without real jeopardy.
The Hoxbys are NOT the first couple, with one solid scholar, and one extremely elite member, where there has been difficulty placing the other in a department at Harvard or Yale. There have been other prominent cases, even in the last few years. This does not mean the second scholar is “worth nothing as a scholar” and it also does not mean that he or she is being “unfairly excluded.” It might be about the character, the reach, the imaginativeness of his or her scholarship. There’s a lot that might affect the case.
Wake Up, Posters! Mr. Hoxby has now not been awarded tenure by two separate institutions-Harvard and Yale. Their English departments are arguably the best in the country. Why should he take a position as lecturer or something less than full tenure (i,e, lecturer in History and Lit-some other lesser position in the university) when he can be a fully tenured professor in a slightly less highly ranked (but still excellent) deparment in an equally great university?
The Hoxbys deserve to be together so they can have a normal life. It is regrettable that this scenario has garnered so much publicity unfair to the departments and schools involved-as well as, in blogs like this, to Mr.Hoxby, whose scholarly worth has been picked over in ways that no doubt do less than full justice to the complexity of his case. But then the Hoxbys have chosen in their disappointment not to distance themselves from that publicity; indeed they have helped drive it. For the most part, in public forums, this will turn out in their favor, because no one in authority can or will comment. But in private forums speculation and discussion might be more painful, which is regrettable but under the circumstances also unavoidable.
Observer
6/21/2007 12:11 pm
this is just sickening. we have mass hall people who feel defensive because they did nothing when they should have done something engaging in wholesale character assassination. this is reward caroline hoxby gets for being a great member of the university? attack her, attack her husband. i am disgusted. when do we get rid of these sick summer-istas in mass hall who have no scruples?
6/21/2007 12:46 pm
Last Anonymous,
Where is the attack? What are you talking about? Do some citing.
Also, don’t assume so much. Do you have any information about these things or are you just a suspicious person?
SE
6/21/2007 1:15 pm
In response to the anonymous poster of June 20, 11:14 pm, I wish to correct the record. I left Yale when we had Stanford offers and, upon reflection, Caroline and I had decided that we would prefer Stanford-Stanford to Yale-Yale or Yale-Harvard. Caroline, who likes and respects her colleagues and students in the economics department and in other departments at Harvard, wanted to give Harvard every chance to respond to the Stanford offer, and the Harvard administration encouraged me to join Harvard as a way to facilitate this. I was told that it would be easier for Harvard colleagues to get to know me if I were there. My department chair at Yale told me, when I left, that I would have the strong support of the Yale English department if I were to remain and go up for tenure on schedule (which would have been this year), and I was given similar reassurances of good will from the Provost’s office. Obviously, there is no guarantee that the sentiments of the department would have remained the same or that the review committee at the university would have concurred with their recommendation. But the Yale English department did not reject me, and I did not reject the Yale English department, a department for which I have the deepest respect. Whatever Harvard did or did not do, it did on its own, and it should be ready and willing to take responsibility for its own decisions, whatever their bases.
For what it is worth, according to the latest NRC rankings of English departments Yale is 1, Stanford is 3, and Harvard is 7 in overall effectiveness. On faculty quality, Harvard and Yale are tied at 1 and Stanford is ranked 3, though the difference is not statistically significant.
I would be happy to see an end to this public discussion but I did not think I could let anonymous deprecations of my work go entirely unnoticed.
6/21/2007 2:22 pm
Dr. Hoxby,
Despite the fulminations of a few folks here and in the thread above, I trust you don’t really see very much ‘deprecation’ of your work here. Although I was pointing out how specialized it was (and placing that in the context of Harvard’s old-schooly English Dept.), this idea that the knives are out in this back-and-forth seems wholly invented by sowers of scandal and schism.
On the other hand, the anonymous poster you refer to did have a sentence or two that seemed likely to create misapprehensions about your relationship with Yale. So it’s definitely good that you cleared that up.
And a good reminder that all the theory-spinning is about actual people (and actual scholarship), not tokens of one possible aggrievement or another.
Standing Eagle
6/22/2007 7:17 am
Standing Eagle, you have a nerve. Why don’t you read your posting of
June 19, 8.40 again. What was your intent with this post? Where you trying to suggest that Dr. Hoxby’s research and teaching was worthy of tenure at Harvard?
If you are a member of the Harvard administration why don’t you comment upon the fact that the only sad thing about the Hoxbys is that two smart and outstanding scholars and teachers are leaving Harvard. And they are leaving Harvard not because this was their first choice, nor because one of them went through a tenure committee and found not worthy of tenure.
They are leaving Harvard for the very same reasons that a number of scholars have left in the last few years. Because a very small number of ADMINISTRATORS in the President’s and Provost’s Office have taken upon themselves the authority to decide who can and who cannot be put forth through an ad-hoc.
This is OUTRAGEOUS, a real SCANDAL. It represents the abrogation of senior faculty of their responsability to people who are not qualified or authorized to do the job of shaping Harvard’s future senior faculty. This is Summers’ legacy to Harvard, the defiguration of the proper role of the faculty.
It is UNTRUE that the English Department did not want to put Dr. Hoxby forth for tenure. That decision was made above that Department and prior to having all senior members of that department consider it.
I understand why you, if indeed you are a member of the Harvard administration with some responsibility for what is described here, would be concerned that the Hoxby’s have chosen not to retreat in silence but to speak up and explain what happened from their point of view. Until now the only reason those at Harvard who have abused their prerrogatives as admnistrators have gotten away with it because no one has come out publicly to expose this aberrant state of affairs.
Good for Blair and Caroline Hoxby that they are secure enough in who they are as scholars that are not intimidated by the tactics that seem to have served Mass Hall in the past so well. Their willingness to put forth their own narrative will serve them well in the end. And perhaps, as more people follow their example, this will expose those at Harvard who have usurped powers vested in the faculty.
You, Standing Eagle, may or may not see how bad Harvard looks with this departure. A number of those implicated in the administration end up with egg on their faces as intellectual minions improperly discharging their duties.
It takes true scholars like Blair and Caroline Hoxby to help Universities live up to the values they represent. Their departure to Stanford shows that, at least at present, those values are more at home in Palo Alto than they are in Cambridge.