“I think it’s simply that when any institution experiences a period of controversy, that creates an appearance of instability,” Shelemay said.

Chair of the Sociology Department Mary C. Waters told the Boston Globe that she has recently received e-mails from three universities, two which had never pursued her before, asking if they should consider making her employment offers.

“I don’t want to leave at this point,” she told the Globe, but said she is concerned that others may choose to depart.

Maria M. Klawe, dean of Princeton’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, said that while she personally has not directly contacted professors at Harvard, “it’s probably true that there are number of different departments, not just at Princeton, who are saying ‘We tried to get someone years ago, maybe now we have a chance,’” Klawe said.

Klawe stressed that for most professors, the decision to move from one university to another is a complicated one.

“The things that cause a person to leave a university are not usually a single event,” she said. “It’s always a very complex set of factors.”

And while very few Harvard professors leave each year, President Summers said yesterday that Harvard does its best to convince them to stay.

“We work very hard in a number of different situations each year when other universities try to recruit valued faculty from here,” Summers said last night. “That’s something we always do, and it’s very important.”

—Staff writer Evan H. Jacobs can be reached at ehjacobs@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Daniel J. T. Schuker can be reached at dschuker@fas.harvard.edu.