Cornel West. K. Anthony Appiah. Carol Gilligan. Jeffrey Sachs.
All are defecting to other institutions in what appears to be a mass departure by Harvard's star professors. The most notable is West's departure last week to Princeton after a drawn out and well publicized personal feud with Harvard president Lawrence Summers.
One of the nation's most widely cited scholars of religion, West focuses on religious thought, social theory and pragmatic philosophy.
A Harvard graduate, he earned his Ph.D. degree in philosophy at Princeton in 1980 and was later awarded the James Madison Medal, the highest honor Princeton bestows on graduate alumni.
At Harvard, West taught introductory through advanced courses, and his "Introduction to Afro-American Studies" class was the second most popular course at the university.
Princeton also lured K. Anthony Appiah away from Harvard in January. Appiah will assume the position of Larry S. Rockefeller professor of philosophy, effective September.
Appiah, currently the Charles H. Carswell Professor of Afro-American Studies and of Philosophy at Harvard University, specializes in moral and political philosophy, African and African-American studies, literary theory and criticism, issues of personal and political identity, multiculturalism and nationalism.
"I believe that, of all the universities in the world, Princeton is the one where I have the best chance of doing the work, as a scholar and teacher, that I want to do," he said, according to the University website.
"I have the deepest respect for the faculty and the traditions of the philosophy department and of the Center for Human Values, each of which strikes me as providing quite extraordinary colleagues with whom to pursue the questions that engage me," he added.
By no means has the defection been confined to the Afro-American Studies Department.
Other professors are leaving Harvard to take advantage of opportunities that it could not match.
Carol Gilligan, a Harvard psychologist whose groundbreaking research on gender and human development transformed psychological inquiry, will join the faculty of New York University as a full-time professor in June.
As a visiting professor at the NYU School of Law for the past three years, Gilligan said she enjoyed the rigorous intellectual environment provided by the law school's faculty and students.
Gilligan's new, uniquely interdisciplinary appointment will encompass spending time both at NYU's School of Education and also NYU's School of Law.
Jeffrey Sachs, an economist, also announced he was leaving Harvard for Columbia, where he was recruited as part of its ongoing effort to promote its economics department as a center for teaching and research.
The opportunities Columbia offered could not be matched by Harvard, Sachs said.
Sachs had been at Harvard continuously since he first entered as a freshman 29 years ago. He added that he was leaving his alma mater reluctantly.
Anticipating speculation that he shared the sort of conflicts with Summers that alienated West and Appiah, Sachs said that while he had had his share of disagreements with Summers, he felt Summers could not bring to Cambridge what Columbia and New York had to offer.
Sachs is relocating to New York in part to accept his appointment by United Nations secretary-general as under-secretary general responsible for organizing an international response to poverty.
Sachs will also direct Columbia's Earth Institute, a role that suits his expertise in the economics of development and his outspoken advocacy of policies alleviating third world poverty. The Institute integrates economics, natural sciences, environmental concerns and public health.
"What Columbia is offering through the Earth Institute," the Columbia website quoted Sachs as saying, "is a chance to pursue my commitment to sustainable economic development in the third world on a scale that does not exist at any other academic center in the world."
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