The administration acts on an individual basis, providing older professors with consultation and advice on retirement options. In addition, Harvard continues to provide office space for professors with emeritus status, which is reserved for professors who are no longer required to teach, but remain affiliated with the University.

Ten years after the law took effect at Harvard, many of the fears about the effects on faculty turnover have proved less grave than many had anticipated.

“There were all these dire predictions, and most of them didn’t come true,” Whitehead Professor of Political Philosophy Dennis F. Thompson says. “Certainly in the humanities and social sciences, people tend to retire at age 70 anyway. Really not much happened at all noteworthy.”

Closer to Home

But while Harvard students can still take courses from the country’s most experienced academics, there have been some changes, both feared and unforeseen, that have altered the composition of the University.

Some faculty and students say they fear that the lingering presence of some professors restricts hiring of younger faculty members and stymies change within departments.

Apart from faculty diversity, some fear that the high number of older professors may stunt faculty recruitment and broaden the age gap between students and professors.

“For a constant faculty size, at least for the tenured faculty, who almost never leave Harvard, that means the average age of the faculty must increase, the frequency of appointments has to be lower and the age gap between the faculty and the students has got to grow,” says Professor of Astronomy Robert Kirshner.

In addition, FAS currently suffers from a space crunch exacerbated by the lack of turnover in several departments, which may have been exacerbated by the continued work of older professors.

But while administrators worry about the implications on hiring, pedagogy, space and departmental balance between tenured and non-tenured professors, they have presented no systematic plans for addressing the issue beyond individual consultation with aging professors.

“The change in the law has undoubtedly had an effect,” former Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles says. “We had to develop institutional habits for how we handle ourselves and, after 10 years, things are still being shaped.”

Going Strong

A snowy January evening finds Erving Research Professor of Chemistry William Klemperer ’50 in his office in the basement of Mallinckrodt laboratory buildings, with two graduate students by his side.

Klemperer, who has been teaching at Harvard since 1954, with only three years on leave, maneuvers the quiet office space comfortably.

“I aged quite nicely,” Klemperer says. “I am still active. I am very happy.”