{shortcode-d478443be69d3287c0b183dfac70b8c6ee3680db}
Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 appointed four new University Professors last Wednesday, Harvard’s highest faculty distinction.
The title was conferred to Catherine Dulac in the Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology, Harvard Law School Professor Noah R. Feldman ’92, Claudia Goldin in the Department of Economics, and Cumrun Vafa in the Department of Physics.
The University Professorship was created in 1935 to “honor individuals whose groundbreaking work crosses the boundaries of multiple disciplines.” University Professors are allowed to work in any department and school across campus.
“It really is an honor and a privilege at this point in my time at Harvard to be able to think that I can walk across, not just the Yard, but walk from Longwood to HBS to the Ed School to the Kennedy School to the Design School, and feel that this is one university,” Goldin said.
Goldin specializes as an economic historian, researching the origins of current economic issues, most notably income inequality and the gender pay gap. Her work analyzing American women’s labor market outcomes won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2023.
Goldin described Harvard as a “siloed” place, and said she strives to make more interdisciplinary connections as a University Professor.
“I think that the graduate students in history would gain an enormous amount from economics, and the graduate students in economics would gain an enormous amount from history,” Goldin said.
Dulac has spent almost three decades at Harvard as a professor researching molecular and cellular biology. Her lab, focused on the neurobiology of social behaviour, is currently investigating the brain’s response to social isolation and sickness.
Dulac said one of the most attractive parts of Harvard is that it is a “very large and very rich place in terms of science,” and she has been able to collaborate with colleagues in the evolutionary biology department, chemistry department, and Harvard Medical School.
“No matter what new approach, experimental or analytical approach you’re interested in, there’s always a world expert, somewhere around and people are usually eager to extend their own research program to collaborate with you,” Dulac said.
Feldman, a professor at the Law School, specializes in constitutional studies and researches the intersection of religion, AI, ethics, and history.
As a University Professor, he is looking to teach an undergraduate course on “free speech and free expression, and its relationship to how to live a good life.”
Feldman, whose past projects range from the oversight board of Facebook to helping draft the Iraqi Constitution, named “curiosity” as the driving force behind his ability to work across diverse fields.
Cumrun Vafa, who has worked at Harvard since 1985, has been conducting ground-breaking research on string theory as chair of the physics department.
Vafa has already taken an interdisciplinary approach to his research, teaching a mathematics course and collaborating with the astronomy department.
Vafa said the study of string theory “involves a lot of interactions with different areas within our university” and he is interested in working with the philosophy department as a University Professor to study the “aesthetic aspects of science” that are “equally important.”
Vafa said it is a “ big compliment to be distinguished with this honor.”
“We are among such amazing groups that I feel that just being here is the big distinction,” he added.
