NO GO

So I will not be teaching a course at Harvard in the Spring.  I do have a Plan B, which I shall get to a moment, but first let me fill you in on what I was told.  Nicole De\wendorp, a very nice scholar who is currently serving as the acting Director of Undergraduate Studies in Social Studies, told me the following:

First, the disappointing news. There really seem to be too many roadblocks with Harvard’s regulatory world to allow you to be able to teach a seminar in the spring. I will explain:

 

1. We checked with the Office of Faculty Affairs about whether you could teach for us either for free or for a reduced (token) amount. We were told that for equity reasons, we would have to hire you as a lecturer and pay you at the normal lecturer salary. Our lecturers are paid per “piece” –aka FTEs. We’re allotted only a certain amount of FTEs per year, and this year we’ve completely maxed out our FTEs and do not have any available to add on someone new.
2. Even if we had any FTEs, the situation is further complicated by the fact that if you live in North Carolina, which I think you do (but please correct me if I am wrong), that’s not a state in which Harvard is registered to do business. What that means is that we cannot legally hire you.
3. Finally, to teach your class over Zoom, we would need to go through the Accomodations Office, which is apparently not at all accommodating to faculty who want to teach remotely. I don’t know details, but I guess the last time one of our faculty tried to do this for health reasons, it was a huge headache.

 

Second, the hopeful news.

 

David (Armitage) is very excited to hold an event over Zoom in which you would share some of your experiences with the history of Social Studies and Harvard life in the 1950s and 1960s. He, like I was, is also interested in hearing some of your thoughts about the present. He’s thinking that perhaps you could talk for 35 or 40 minutes, after which he would moderate a Q and A. If that sounds agreeable to you, then I will ask our staff assistant, Sarah Helmar, to be in touch with both of you to work out possible scheduling.

 

He's also thinking that if that event goes well, then it would be great to arrange a separate event over Zoom in the spring—a two-hour conversation with you about Marx. I realize that two hours is a poor substitute for an entire semester, but it would at least allow us to benefit from your generous offer without having to navigate the many hurdles that will prevent you from teaching for us this spring.

 

Let me know your thoughts.

 

Nicole

I love the fact that Harvard is not registered to do business in North Carolina! Oh well…

Inasmuch as I shall not be teaching a seminar on the thought of Karl Marx in the spring, I have decided instead to pull together everything I have been working on for the past 40 years with regard to his thought and lay it out, systematically and fully, in a series of blog posts. This will be a book length manuscript running perhaps 400 pages or more and incorporating significant portions of books and articles I have already published, but woven together in a single connected narrative. I will talk more about that tomorrow. For now, I must go back to watching the commentary and the hearing just held in Fulton County, Georgia.