Kaiser says she thought the committee should have helped Adelson and Perlman find other positions within the University.

"I feel pretty disappointed by how we were treated by the committee after we sent our letters," Kaiser says. "The only response we got was from Dean Knowles--we didn't get any response from the committee. If Knowles had had any pressure from the committee, he might have had reason to reconsider. He got nothing."

Moving On

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McCarthy says the ESPP concentration would provide some other way of teaching the material covered in Adelson and Perlman's tutorial.

"We remain committed to teaching about this area and it will be continued in some other way," McCarthy says. "It's being decided now how it'll be taught, and it will be finalized by the time the course guide is put together."

Even with this assurance, some ESPP concentrators say they remain skeptical that the concentration would adequately replace the course. Elizabeth L. Kanter '99, an ESPP concentrator who took the seminar last year, said it would be difficult to create an equivalent class.

"I think it would be really hard to replace this class because it wasn't just about the academics," Kanter says. "The professors of this class try to take what you believe in and then make you look at it and think about why you believe in it, what you want to do about it and how you want to go about dealing with it. This is something I haven't experienced here at Harvard often."

"Maybe a class could replace this one but it'll have to prove itself," Kanter added. "Harvard's lucky because it has a short institutional memory since students leave. But really, I don't think this class could be replaced."