"It's rather difficult to drop a field," Fairbank said. "You come along with a new field and you have to raise money for it. A field once established usually doesn't disappear." A field did disappear when Fairbank was promoted to a place in Chinese history over 25 years ago. The history of the Spanish Empire has not been taught at Harvard since.

But Fairbank is the exception to the rule. If Woodside receives tenure at Harvard, he will have Fairbank to thank for it. In 1960, Fairbank came to Woodside with an idea.

"I suddenly realized in 1960 that Vietnam is a subject that isn't studied," Fairbank recalled. "That was a real giveaway. What was I doing around here? We were so occupied with China that we never thought about Vietnam. It was French, and no one ever went there."

"Luckily, an able man came along," he continued. "Woodside was at Harvard as a graduate student in Chinese history. I asked him if he was interested, and he said he was." Last year, Woodside published a book on the Chinese influence in Vietnam.

Some men do very well when they switch fields. John Womack Jr. '59, professor of History, moved from American to Latin American history when he was a junior faculty member. Now he has a brilliant reputation and a tenured position at Harvard that the History Department had wanted to fill for 14 years. But not everyone is so successful. Thomas E. Skidmore made a giant leap from medieval European history to Brazilian and South American history. He is now at the University of Wisconsin.

***

Dear Miss Getachair,

Could I be dreaming? Just yesterday my Department voted against giving me tenure. Today I talked to ten senior faculty members and not one brought it up. Am I hallucinating? Did it all really happen?  SCHIZO

Dear Schizo,

You sound quite sane, but forgetful. Remember: you're no longer living in the real world. Now you are at Harvard.

IF SHE CAME to Harvard, Lewis Carroll's Alice would feel right at home. The world of University manners becomes most surreal after a junior faculty member is not rehired. None of his colleagues mention it. "It's perfectly absurd," Klein laughed. "You've taught joint courses with these people, you've known them outside. Nothing is said. Not even, 'Gosh, that's too bad.' It's very strange." Thomson also marvelled at "the degree to which these things aren't spoken about," adding, "No one says, 'I'm sorry things didn't work out."

No one says a thing. The system keeps on plugging along: the frills change, but the premises remain the same. Occasionally, the bulky machinery causes hilarious blunders. Consider the episode of the secretary in the Department of Romance Languages, who accidentally mailed a letter inviting the wrong professor to come with tenure to Harvard. He accepted and he came. There was nothing the Department could do.

But such gross mistakes are the exception. The system normally runs quite smoothly. It doesn't encourage good teaching, but it does let some good teachers through. It loses many bright young scholars, but it manages to hang on to a few. Lately, under pressure from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Harvard has increased its hiring of blacks and women. These days, if a clever department chairman wants to hire additional non-tenured faculty, he just looks around for an eligible woman or black. The President and Dean also ask department chairmen to submit a list of blacks and women who were considered for each tenure appointment. Dean Dunlop may be cutting financial corners, but not at the expense of the University's affirmative action plan.

It would be naive to expect promotions to proceed on purely objective, academic criteria. What is alarming about the present system is not the latitude it permits for personal considerations. Rather, it is the system's premises. The University should be a place for teaching as well as for research. When a department or ad hoc committee is considering a man's record, his teaching ability is not the primary concern. Because departments at Harvard initiate appointments, the criteria for selection tend to be especially technical and book-oriented. At smaller colleges, the president usually directs the entire procedure and pays more attention to a candidate's teaching ability.

Harvard must find ways to develop and keep bright young scholars, or else it will lose the best men to the universities catching up from behind. While it is all well and good to disdain the superstar salaries and featherweight teaching loads that some universities give to distinguished professors, it would be unrealistic to think that Harvard can trade on its name alone for much longer. Once eminent men have settled down somewhere, it is very difficult to lure them away. Either you develop your own young scholars or you dangle out tempting bribes to attract big names from outside. Harvard must choose its course, unless it wishes to languish like an ancient battleship, a glorious but non-functional reminder of another era