“I don’t think one could get something serious started and over with, and so it’s likely to be something less serious. That’s not what we need,” Mansfield says. “I think experience elsewhere has shown that this J-term is goof-off time.”
Assistant Professor of English and of Visual and Environmental Studies J.D. Connor says that in addition to the effect of downplaying academics, moving the school year forward could harm students’ other activities.
“For those students who imagine a future in academia and other highly motivated students, the yawning gulf between the last day of classes in December and the end of exams can be filled with sparkling original research,” Connor says. “Pushing exams back, compressing reading period and exams, etc. will thwart that kind of work, and no J-term can make up for it. I fear that we may trade seriousness—about academics, the arts and athletics—for a stress-free holiday and some smorgasbord course offerings in January.”
A J-term for undergraduates will only be possible if Harvard adopts the University Committee on Calendar Reform’s recommendation to end the first semester before winter break and start the second semester in late January or early February.
Wolfson Professor of Jewish Studies Jay M. Harris, the co-chair of Overall Academic Experience, said the University-wide committee’s decision to make way for a J-term was not intended to force the College to institute one.
“The Calendar Reform Committee has no ability to tell FAS what they should be doing,” he says. “It’s more a matter of having the curricular review represented on the calendar committee and I think that’s certainly happening and happening well.”
In order to ensure collaboration between the pedagogy working group and the calendar reform committee, Cohen was also a member of the University-wide committee and approved the recommendation to end the first semester before winter break.
The calendar reform committee’s report will be discussed by the Faculty at its April 20 meeting, which will foreshadow the discussion of the curricular review report, which is scheduled to take place on May 4.
Mansfield says changes in the January calendar could, aside from providing questionable academic benefits, hinder professors’ research.
“Your calendar is your life and your life is your vacations,” he says. “It’s during your vacation that you can do your own work.”
Other faculty members also say that starting the academic year earlier and shortening reading period by three days in order to accommodate a J-term is counterproductive and results in logistical difficulties.
Higginson Professor of History and of East Asian Languages and Civilizations Philip A. Kuhn, who is chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, says that asking professors to teach during January would be problematic for administrative reasons.
“January is a terrible month from our point of view because it’s graduate admissions month, so we have a heavy administrative load,” Kuhn says. “I think undergraduates would not get the best of our efforts.”
Professor of Psychology Daniel M. Wegner adds that any calendar change may have an adverse effect on the other two semesters.
“The rest of the semester [would need] to be foreshortened,” Wegner says. “Students feel reading period is an essential part of their [learning] process.”
A Crimson poll of 363 undergraduates in December found 45 percent support taking first-semester exams before winter break. Forty percent of students are opposed, with a three-point margin of error. The poll did not ask about a J-term specifically.
—Staff writer Joshua D. Gottlieb can be reached at jdgottl@fas.harvard.edu.