Married faculty hired in tandem

When his wife Anne-Marie Slaughter '80 was offered the position of dean at the Wilson School in May 2002, professor Andy Moravcsik was in a bind. He had tenure at Harvard, headed the European Studies Center and had two young children comfortably enrolled in the Cambridge school system.

Moravcsik knew that the Wilson School position was "a good match for Anne-Marie." With only a little hesitation he accomodated his wife's move: Slaughter and their two children left for Princeton while Moravcsik remained in Cambridge, lessening his teaching load to three days per week so he could spend the other half with his family in New Jersey.

By the summer of 2004, almost two years later, Moravcsik had had enough. He inquired about a position at Princeton and the University responded, offering him a tenured position in the politics department, where he began teaching this fall.

While the University sacrificed little in hiring Moravcsik — he is a leading scholar in European studies — the issue of hiring married faculty has been a growing concern for the University.

As Dean of the Faculty David Dobkin noted, "Princeton, like all universities, has been faced with more 'two body problems' as our society shifts towards more two career families."

The Wilson School, which has been aggressively hiring new professors in recent years, has had to take into account the credentials of both prospective professors and their spouses.

Professors Robert and Nannerl Keohane will be joining the department next fall. Helen Milner, who began teaching in the Wilson School this year, will have her husband join as a Wilson School fellow this fall.

Departments such as electrical engineering, mathematics and politics have also faced the challenge of hiring professors in pairs.

In the engineering school, Dean Maria Klawe was instrumental in hiring Robert Calderbank. He joined his wife Ingrid Daubechies, a mathematics professor here since 1994.

"In the past [both men and women] were sometimes considered less seriously because they were spouses of an existing faculty member or someone being recruited," Klawe said in an email.

But the University has been lucky this year, especially considering the stellar scholarship of Calderbank, she said.

Calderbank and Daubechies met and worked together at AT&T in the 1980s. While Daubechies received an offer to teach at Princeton in 1993, her husband continued his research in the private sector. During his years at the company, he patented parts of the voiceband modem, the device that sends internet signals over the telephone line, and secured a senior position in the organization.

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Both of their careers blossomed in the 1990s along separate paths, and the commute was not a significant problem. AT&T's laboratory where Calderbank worked was in Morristown, N.J. — about an hour's drive from Princeton.

But when the telecommunications industry went into a slump after the stock market crash in 2000, Calderbank sensed it was time to change career paths.

"We wanted to use this opportunity to get a job together," Daubechies said.

The couple applied to twelve universities, many of which made them dual offers. Princeton was slow to respond, but eventually recognized the consequence of not hiring Calderbank — losing Daubechies.

"Princeton's mills move very slowly," Daubechies said.

Because Calderbank is well-known for his research and had briefly taught as an adjunct professor at Princeton from 1993-1995, it was a relatively simple decision for the University to hire him.

Though Princeton was not in need of a professor of Calderbank's expertise, Klawe said, the University made room in the electrical engineering and mathematics departments.

Klawe said she went through the same experience when the University created a position for her husband, Nick Pippener, after she was offered the position of dean of the engineering school.

"[The computer science department] was not particularly looking for someone in Nick's area before I was chosen as dean, but because he is an outstanding researcher and teacher who brought additional expertise to the department, they were happy to be able to recruit him," she said.

The same held true for Calderbank's hiring this past year, she added.

Perhaps the most prominent joint hiring this year is that of Nannerl and Robert Keohane, who are both joining the Wilson School next fall.

Considering the contributions they have made to their respective fields — Nannerl Keohane in political theory and Robert Keohane in international relations — and resumes that include teaching together at Stanford, Harvard and Duke universities, their joint hiring at Princeton was not contested.

"We have certainly made it a high priority to stay together," Nannerl Keohane said, who is leaving the Duke presidency for Princeton.

The Keohanes have not always had such an easy time securing jobs together, especially when they were less established in their fields during the early 1980s.

In 1981 Nannerl Keohane was offered the presidency at Wellesley University, her alma mater. It was an offer she could not refuse. Her husband gave up tenure at Stanford to traverse the country and join their family of six in Massachusets, but had no offer awaiting him at a comparable university.

He ended up taking a job in the less prestigious politics department at Brandeis University to join his wife and family.

"I don't like to call it a sacrifice," he said. "But I moved from a first rate institution to a lesser institution — Brandeis."

After two years, his situation took a positive turn when he was offered tenure at Harvard — a university that met his high academic standards. Since then, both professors have been hired in tandem.