International relations profs go on sabbatical

As students receive midterm grades this week, some juniors are beginning to plan for their final year of classes and to search for thesis advisers.

But for students who want to find advisers who specialize in international relations (IR), the search will be tougher than usual. Several IR professors associated with the Wilson School and the politics department will be on sabbatical next year.

At least four of the 16 IR politics faculty listed on the department website will be on leave, posing a problem for students in this field to secure advisers for independent work in two of the University's largest departments.

"There will be an exceptional number of leaves among the international faculty next year," politics professor Andrew Moravcsik said in an email. He will be on leave with his wife, Wilson School Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter '80.

Nonetheless, Slaughter explained that the number of faculty scheduled to be on sabbatical is neither unexpected nor unanticipated. Faculty sabbaticals operate on a three-year cycle. Since four new faculty in international relations were hired three years ago, next year's number of leaves reflects earlier efforts to rebuild faculty in the field, Slaughter said in an email.

Slaughter and Moravcsik will go to China with their two sons and plan to conduct research at the Shanghai Institute of International Affairs and Fudan University.

In addition, politics professor Jason Lyall will work at Harvard's Olin Institute for Strategic Studies. Politics professor Thomas Christensen will take up his new post in the nation's capital as deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs with responsibility for China, Taiwan and Mongolia.

Politics chair Helen Milner stressed, however, that the IR sabbaticals will not hurt the IR offerings for students.

"It is not clear that there is an unusual number of faculty on leave next year in our department," Milner said in an email. "A number of our faculty have joyously had, or are going to have, children this year. Princeton happily entitles them to relief time. We have been able to replace them in many cases."

She added that the department will be offering 64 courses during the 2007-08 academic year, two more than it offered this year.

But some juniors in the politics department worry that the number of professors on sabbatical may hurt their senior theses.

Boris Spiwak '08 said that he has had a hard time finding a thesis adviser in the politics department.

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Spiwak, a political economy concentrator from Venezuela, is looking for a Latin American specialist to advise his thesis on the comparative oil policies of Venezuela and Norway. But he said he is unlikely to find such an adviser due to leaves of absence and a shortage of Latin American studies professors who can advise theses in the politics department.

Publicity of which professors are leaving and visiting the University would ease the process, he said, suggesting that the department send a list to its concentrators by email.

"I think that of course it's important to know who's leaving," Spiwak said, "but I think it's really important that students know who's going to be here next year so they can plan ahead."

Though sabbaticals can frustrate students who want to take classes with certain professors, the leave time is important in sustaining the professional growth of academics. Time to conduct independent research, professors say, is part of the educational process.

"When faculty go on leave, they spend most of the time, as [Slaughter and I] intend to do in China, reading, writing and doing field work — which is also part of our job at a world-class research institution like Princeton," Moravcsik said.

"I expect (as do my colleagues, I am sure) to return not just having completed some research that requires on-site field research abroad and large blocks of writing time," he said, "but also with new ideas to bring to the classroom."