Defending Their Turf

Many said that Ambady’s strongest supporters within the department were not in her field of social psychology and that this plagued her efforts to become a full professor.

All departmental members were encouraged to write letters to a tenure committee attesting to Ambady’s qualifications.

According to several sources in the department, when Ambady’s tenure was discussed by the department at least three senior faculty members in cognitive social psychology were opposed.

The cognitive specialists in the department are Professors of Psychology Mahzarin R. Banaji, Daniel T. Gilbert, Ellen J. Langer and Daniel M. Wegner.

A source within the department said that Langer was one of Ambady’s supporters.

Ambady specializes in nonverbal social psychology.

Gilbert declined comment on the case, while Langer and Wegner were unavailable.

Several said that the cognitive psychologists—who focus on intrapersonal behaviors—are dominating Harvard’s social psychology discipline and this clearly hurts scholars such as Ambady whose research focuses on group indentities and interpersonal behaviors.

“They may have felt that everyone had to follow their major model—and that is not the path Nalini is following,” Rosenthal said.

But while she may not be representative of the type of research being done at Harvard, outside experts say Ambady’s research is valued in the field.

“The work she is doing is mainstream across the field. The frontier is where she is going,” said Steven J. Breckler, a program director for the National Science Foundation.

Several other factors for the denial have been quietly discussed within the department.

Several professors in the department said some of Ambady’s colleagues turned against her because of her involvement in uncovering fraudulent research conducted by former Associate Professor Karen M. Ruggiero.

Others cite the addition of Banaji—another female Indian professor in social psychology who arrived from Yale in 2000 after being once denied tenure by Harvard in 1996—as a factor that did not work in Ambady’s favor.