Until recently, at least, the Harvard department was also near the top in studies of German philosophical thought.
But when Professor Seyla Benhabib, one of the country's top scholars of German writers, decided to leave earlier this year for Yale, it left Harvard's department with few senior Faculty to offer graduate students in German political theory.
"If a graduate student had come here to study the German philosophers of the nineteenth century," says Williams Professor of History and Political Science Roderick L. MacFarquhar, the government department chair, "they certainly would have worked with Seyla."
Several members of the department emphasize Benhabib's unique role in the department.
"We don't have anyone else," says Steven R. Levitsky, an assistant professor in the department who arrived last year.
"We were extremely strong [in German philosophy] until Seyla Benhabib left," says Buttenweiser University Professor Stanley Hoffmann, a 47-year department veteran.
One of the main fallouts of Benhabib's departure may be a lack of future course offerings on German thinkers.
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