These "entrepreneurial" professors, who aregrowing in number because of the increasing totheir work, outside Harvard than to students,Riesman says.
"It is not unusual for a professor to be neededand they're not around," he says. "What I call the`independent entrepreneur' is often characterizedby irresponsibility and an excessive lack ofcollegial concern."
The time many spend receiving awards orattending conferences might be better spenthelping students during reading period, Riesmansays.
"It's not just at Harvard, but it's asociety-wide issue, that people and professor nolonger sense their own personal responsiblity inmatters of general importance," he adds.
Smokescreen
While faculty committees allegedly oversee mostaspects of College life, in some case thegoverning role of these professors in little morethan an official smokescreen.
Passive faculty committees can often fail toreform programs that are not doing their job.
In the Expository Writing program, forinstance, the faculty committee responsible forgoverning its working meets only a year for lessthan two hours.
During recent years, while the facultycommittee was listening to briefings by outgoingExpos Director Richard C. Marius, Marius wasrunning the program into the ground.
Faculty members allegedly responsible foroverseeing Marius and the program were unaware ofits actual workings.
"I wish I could know more about the system so Icould respond more effectively [to questions],"Associate Professor of Music Graeme M. Boone saidlast semester. "I feel like I'm sort of on theedge of the knowledge."
With so little time each year to studyproblems, the