`Young Blood Transfusion` Stir in Harvard University

Harvard University is creating a stir by introducing a `young blood transfusion` policy for appointing young scholars for life tenure.

The person leading the `young blood transfusion` is Lawrence H. Summers who was inaugurated as the president of Harvard University last year.

President Summers recently stopped the call for two 54-year-old professors who were supposed to transfer to Harvard University from Cambridge University in England and Stanford University. The reason for rejection was that prospective young scholars are better for life tenure than older scholars who have past achievements.

The Wall Street Journal quoted Dean Jeremy R. Knowles of the College of Arts and Science at Harvard University saying, "President Summers does not want a `dead volcano` but an `active volcano` ."

Some critics of the policy initiated by President Summers, who was appointed as professor at Harvard University at the age of 28, say that it is far from Harvard tradition to appointed scholars who are not recognized as No.1 experts in their field. The average age for life tenure track positions at Harvard is 55, and professors under the age of 40 comprise less than 10 percent of the population.

But young scholars, who have difficulties in making their way into the universities dominated by older scholars, welcome the change at Harvard, the `compass` for U.S. universities. The average age for professors in 4-year universities was 49.2 years in 1999, which rose from 47.6 years in 1993, and it has become harder for young scholars to secure appointments.

Michael Sandel, Professor of Social Science at Harvard criticized, "President Summers` measure seems to take the statistic-oriented study of younger scholars to be better than the traditional historical-philosophical study of older scholars." Jan Ziolkowski, Professor of Medieval Latin and Comparative Literature said, "He should know that many scholars lose their fire in the years of their youth."

Sung-Kyu Kim kimsk@donga.com