Word: scientistic
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Shrewd and stupid, sly and blustering, but always coolly gliding to some strong rhythm only he can hear, Venkman is a brilliantly observed caricature of the contemporary urban male. At one point Weaver, representing the reality principle, informs him that he seems less a scientist than a game-show host. But he is a far more amusing figure. He is, in fact, some ultimate Yuppie, seemingly stoned on fern-bar manners, mores and folk wisdom. His utter imperviousness to anything that cannot be comprehended in those basic materialist terms is finally a more potent weapon than all the atomic gadgetry...
...wouldn't go to Ohio State, where they pay more, but it's not so exciting academically," says a social scientist. In an absolute sense, Harvard could use some improvement, adds another, but in a relative it is better than most...
Other looming issues Fellows cite also revolve around money. These include the skyrocketing costs of health care and how it will affect the Medical School and Harvard's affiliated hospitals. A related problem is the increasingly high cost of equipping professors, especially scientists. It costs $1 million to endow a professorship at Harvard, but a scientist's lab equipment may cost more than that...
Sidney Verba '53, the genial political scientist, was mentioned as a likely candidate for dean of the Faculty. He didn't get the job, but instead was tapped to replace Oscar Handlin as Pfozheimer University Professor and University Librarian. Handlin moved over to the Loeb University chair, replacing retiring Law School eminence grise, Archibald Cox '34. Two other scholars also nabbed for university chairs, the highest honor Harvard can bestow on its professors: outgoing Dean of the Faculty Henry Resovsky and Business School teaching whiz Roland Christensen...
Verba is philosophical about the legacy he leaves to undergraduate education. As a social scientist, he says he understands that the solutions are not going to be immediate or perfect. "Any reform decays and is oversold at the beginning," he says. "You need, as Mao said, constant vigilance to maintain the revolution. Like any institutions there are flurries of interest. This [interest in reforming undergraduate education] is one that's institutionalized in [this] office and will continue to be something that my successor will have to deal with...