Kennedy School of Government and a top policy adviser to presidential candidate Al Gore '69, says that there is always a way to fit in outside activities. But if a professor is instead struggling to fit in teaching, Kamarck says it is time to quit.

Through the end of 1999, Kamarck taught at the Kennedy School and flew to Washington at least once a week to assist Gore's staff.

"It was really hard. You end up doing a lot of your class preparation on airplanes, and you end up doing it late into the evening and into the morning," Kamarck says. "I dragged my students papers all over New Hampshire, and I found myself grading papers while sitting in hotel lobbies."

Kamarck says she never missed even one office hour during her time working double duty, and when she realized that the campaign was taking too much of her time, she decided to go on leave.

"If professors are cheating and skimping on time with their students, then that's a problem," she says.

Appiah says it is the job of professors to research and publicize their work to the outside community.

Appiah says that textbooks--he wrote one on philosophy and edited an encyclopedia on Africa--are not meant as an algorithm for generating a lecture and thus do not present a compromise to Harvard's integrity when sold to the outside world.

"I think the reason why people ask Harvard professors to write textbooks is because they want them to reflect their experiences at Harvard," he says.