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Published
Monday, May 3, 2004 Thomas
Professor of Education Marcelo Suarez-Orozco will become the first Courtney Sale Ross University Professor of Education
and Globalization at New York University (NYU) in September. Suarez-Orozco, who has also been named co-director
of a new Center on Globalization, Immigration and Education, is the
second senior faculty member of color to announce his departure from
the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) to NYU this year. “After
careful reflection, it has become clear that NYU is the best place
for me to take my basic research, policy work and teaching to the
next level,” said Suarez-Orozco, who has been on leave this year
with his wife at the Ross Institute in New York.
“I am moved by NYU's dynamic and entrepreneurial ethos and
the breathtaking vision of its new leadership.” Carola
Suarez-Orozco, who has served as a Senior Research Associate at HGSE
and co-director of the Harvard Immigration Projects with her
husband, has been named a tenured professor in Applied Psychology
and Teaching & Learning at NYU.
She said that she will be teaching courses on immigrant
youth, academic engagement, ethnic identity and research strategies
with linguistic minority populations. Students and professors described the departure
as a major loss to the Harvard faculty. “They
have both been the most caring, supportive, generous, and inspiring
mentors,” said Desiree Qin-Hillard, a doctoral student who
co-edited Globalization: Culture and Education in the New
Millennium (University of California Press, 2004) with Marcelo
Suarez-Orozco. “Working
with them has been a terrific experience and definitely the best
part of my doctoral training at HGSE.” “The
impact of Marcelo's departure is profound,” said Williams
Professor of Romance Languages Doris Sommer, who co-taught a Latino
Cultures course with Suarez-Orozco for several years.
“Few professionals achieve his level of excellence and
productivity while at the same time cultivating an extraordinary
number of personal friendships.” HGSE Dean Ellen Condliffe Lagemann said the
departure was beyond her control. “Marcelo
and Carola are leaving because NYU offered Carola a tenured
appointment, which we could not do, and because their son is very
happy in a school in NYC,” Lagemann said. “These are personal factors that we can do nothing
about.” Lagemann stated that, while the couple will be
missed, “Globalization and
immigration are strengths of our faculty.” “We
are always sad to see valued faculty members leave, but we will
continue to make globalization and immigration central to our work
at HGSE,” Lagemann said. “Vivian
Louie and Vanessa Fong are among the faculty who do work in that
area.” While excellent scholars, Louie and Fong are
first-year junior faculty members, current students point out. “In
terms of classes, mentorship, and research opportunities, there is
an enormous whole being left by the Suarez-Orozcos' departure,”
said Francisco Gaytan, a doctoral student in Human Development and
Psychology who worked with the couple on the LISA project, a
multi-million dollar, five-year study of immigrant children in the
United States. “Their
study not only contributed to the corpus of knowledge on immigrant
children, practically speaking, it also created great opportunities
for students at HGSE,” Gaytan said.
“Several classes were offered where students were able to
see and use study data firsthand.
The Suarez-Orozcos were able to employ dozens of students who
were interested in immigration on their project.” Professor
of Education Julie Reuben, who chairs the HGSE Faculty Appointments
Committee, said Dean Lagemann “put a high priority on keeping
them” and speculated that part of the dean’s urgency stemmed
from the loss this would represent in HGSE’s faculty diversity. But
while Reuben said she did not know the circumstances that led the
Suarez-Orozcos to leave, speaking generally, she said Harvard does
not compete in “bidding wars” with other schools. “Some
universities are willing to use their resources disproportionately
to recruit and retain faculty,” said Reuben, who noted that she
did not know whether NYU had done so in this instance.
“We have resisted the star system.
We try not to pay individually faculty salaries that are
grossly out of range of their peers; we generally expect all faculty
to have roughly equivalent teaching and institutional
responsibilities. This
means we cannot always match what other institutions are willing to
offer.” Neither Marcelo Suarez-Orozco nor NYU
Steinhardt School of Education Dean Mary Brabeck would comment on
the package offered in this case, though Carola Suarez-Orozco did
say that “NYU’s
ambitious recruitment package will provide us the tools to continue
to build the kind of research and training initiatives to which we
are committed.” In
recent years, Marcelo Suarez-Orozco advocated unsuccessfully for a
center on Latino Studies at Harvard. At NYU, he will be co-directing
a new center on globalization, immigration and education. “There
are now more Latino-origin people in the U.S. that there are people
in Spain, Argentina, Colombia, or any other Spanish speaking country
except for Mexico,” Suarez-Orozco said. “How can a leading
research university not be interested in the cultural, social,
economic, political, and educational issues relating to the greatest
demographic transformation in the last 100 years of U.S. history?” Reuben said that, generally speaking, the
formation of a center is not taken lightly at Harvard. “In
general, despite being wealthy and having a huge reputation, Harvard
is not a university where faculty can do whatever they want,”
Reuben said. “There
are a lot of rules here. You
can’t simply set up a center because you think it is a good
idea.” Reuben concedes that institutions like NYU,
which she says can be “flexible and entrepreneurial,” are more
likely to “set things up quickly in response to the initiative of
people with big reputations,” she said.
“I could see why that might be a more attractive
environment for some people than Harvard.” All other things
being equal, choosing between the two universities is a matter of
taste, said Philip Hosay, who began his career in the history
department at Harvard and is now a department chair at the NYU
Steinhardt School of Education. “The
main attraction of Harvard is Harvard,” Hosay said. “The main
attraction of NYU is New York.” In the
case of Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, New York won. “My
first quasi-ethnographic impressions are that [NYU] seems to be
animated by this unique historical moment in this unique city,” he
said. “The idea of a
university 'of the city and for the city' is very appealing when you
are talking about the most anthropologically fascinating city on
earth and maybe the most fascinating city there ever was.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To read about HGSE's struggle with faculty diversity, please visit: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Andrew K. Mandel, an Ed.M. candidate in the Technology in Education
program, is a member of the Appian Board of Editors. |