Reminisces and Reflections on a Quarter Century at the Harvard Extension School

2006 Alumni Banquet Speech

by Henry Leitner, Assistant Dean for Information Technology

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I think I know what many of you are thinking right now. Let’s see, Leitner is a 25-year honorand. Hmmmm, goodness, does that mean he taught his first Extension School course when he was 8 years old? Or was he 9?

Well, in fact, I wasn’t quite that young, but I was, in fact, still a graduate student—a PhD candidate in applied mathematics in Harvard’s Division of Applied Science, to be precise.

Let me also reassure the religious among you that although today’s date is 06/06/06, and the number 666 is mentioned in the 13th chapter of the Book of Revelation in the Bible, please note that I am NOT—I repeat, I am NOT—the AntiChrist, despite what you might have heard to the contrary. And although it is true that the web and e-mails are abuzz that evil things will happen today, this talk is not one of them.

What I’d like to do for the next 10 or 15 minutes is to reminisce and reflect a bit about my quarter-century at Harvard, and especially about a couple of the remarkable individuals I have encountered over my many years at the University.

As my doctoral thesis was lumbering forward toward completion in 1980, I accepted a position as assistant professor of computer science in the school of management of Boston College.

I arrived at BC for the start of the fall term with an unfinished concluding chapter in my dissertation, and with the responsibilities and expectations of a new academic career looming ahead. Upon arriving at Boston College, however, I soon began to experience severe Harvard withdrawal symptoms, even though at the time, I was still living in a Harvard University undergraduate dormitory as a resident associate.

It turns out that I really, really missed teaching at Harvard. As a graduate student, I had worked as a teaching fellow on numerous occasions in a variety of courses, and I had even taught the very first computer science courses ever at the Harvard Summer School, just after completing my fourth year of graduate study in the late 1970s. Perhaps I had become spoiled from having encountered so many bright and energetic students at Harvard. Or maybe it was the fact that Boston College lacked the large well-equipped lecture halls that I had become so accustomed to in the Science Center at Harvard. Or maybe it was because the computing and network infrastructure at BC seemed so woefully inadequate compared with what I had become used to. Whatever the reasons, I sorely missed being at UNIVERSITAS HARVARDIANA … (all of you alums should recognize that as the Latin that’s written on your diploma).

Well, there simply had to be a way to satisfy this yearning; and so it was that my old grad school roommate, Dr. Wayne Ishikawa, advised me to consider the evening program at Harvard, the Extension School. I followed Wayne’s advice and applied to teach an introductory course in computer science (based upon one I had for which I’d been a teaching fellow many times at Harvard College), and my proposal was accepted. That was just over 25 years and a few thousand students ago. Unlike the protagonist in Thomas Wolfe’s epic novel, You Can't Go Home Again, I found that the Extension School connection reestablished my identity with Harvard in a fundamental way. I felt I had returned home.

As I look back over the period of time that has elapsed, from when I taught my first Extension course in the early 1980s to today, the changes that have occurred in my field—information technology—are striking. Remember, there was no World Wide Web, there were no cell phones, no iPods back when I started at Extension. Yet from that lone introductory computer science course I offered in 1981, the Harvard Extension School today sponsors more than 50 courses listed in the catalogue under computer science, engineering science, and information technology, and some of these courses deal with such advanced subject matter as cryptography, algorithms for data mining, web services and service oriented architecture, communication protocols, and nanoscale science (to mention just a few).

And whereas a quarter of a century ago the Extension School’s students had to share the sometimes very crowded computing facilities in the Science Center that were primarily for use by full-time students enrolled at Harvard College and at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Extension School students today have their own state-of-the-art computing labs at 53 Church Street, a multimillion dollar facility that contains more than 200 Macintosh and Windows personal computers, as well as workstations and high-end multimedia equipment. These facilities serve not just students enrolled in technology courses, but all Harvard Extension School students.

And whereas 25 years ago one could not pursue a degree or certificate in any IT-related field at the Extension School, I can state—with great pride and satisfaction—that for the past eight years, I have directed a professional master’s degree in information technology that today has more than 200 matriculated students and over 120 alumni; and for more than 20 years, I have overseen a graduate certificate in applied sciences that has swelled the alumni ranks of the Extension School by several hundred students.

And what about CYBERSEX!!! No, I won’t be talking about that subject. But at least I’ve managed to wake some of you up…

While the changes I have witnessed and have been a part of are profound, what makes Harvard the special place it is has nothing to do with the riches of its endowment, nor the wonderful buildings that populate the campus. It’s the amazing people—the faculty, students, and staff. Let me illustrate this point with two of my favorite examples.

For the first, I will need to backtrack a bit further than 25 years and reminisce just a little bit about my second year in graduate school at Harvard. I can vividly recall enrolling in a course named the Theory of Computation, which was taught in the lecture hall at the old Aiken Computation Lab on Oxford Street, not far from the Science Center.

Near the beginning of this course, the professor asked all of us to turn to our closest neighbor and exchange contact information with that person. The instructor wanted all of us to work on the course’s rather difficult and abstract problem sets in groups of two, and the easiest way to get this going was to have us each collaborate with whomever was sitting nearby. I turned to my immediate left and found a sleepy-eyed, dirty-blond-haired classmate by the name … William Henry Gates III.

Bill, as he introduced himself, looked like he was around 12 years old and spoke to me in a nasally high-pitched voice. He mentioned he was a Harvard College undergrad and was taking this graduate-level course because he was interested in the subject and looking for a challenge. “Bill,” I said to myself, “must be very bright; after all, the course we were taking was pretty advanced and quite mathematical.”

I soon discovered that Bill Gates had this endearing habit of looking like he was half-asleep in class, but then would manage to raise his hand near the end of the 50-minute session and pose a very challenging question to the professor—which would, on occasion, stop the teacher in his tracks as a fatal flaw in some proof was revealed on the chalkboard. To this day, I can not figure out if Gates was just being a smartass or if he really was uncovering logical errors in the derivation that the rest of us were mindlessly copying into our notebooks.

My interactions with Bill were limited, and frustratingly so. As I recall, it was difficult to get Gates to collaborate effectively with me on the problem sets because he was so distracted by playing poker with his undergraduate buddies and by what seemed to me at the time to be an insatiable desire for hacking on the one research computer we had in the Aiken Lab, an aging PDP-10.

I did not realize it at the time, but the world was going to be changed in profound ways, and much of the transformation would be directly or indirectly related to the keyboard clicking that I observed Gates doing for hours on end, day after day, night after night. For what had happened was this: The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics Magazine had appeared on newsstands, and the cover page featured The Altair 8800 microcomputer.

The magazine’s feature article begins: “The era of the computer in every home—a favorite topic among science fiction writers—has arrived! And it doesn’t cost several thousand dollars … in fact, it’s in a color TV-receiver’s price class—under $400 for a complete kit.” The article goes on to point out that the machine comes with a whopping 256 words of memory (far less than what is in the wristwatch I’m wearing) but that it could be expanded. The photograph of this early personal computer clearly shows the front panel—containing a row of toggle switches for the input of binary information and above those switches, two rows of LEDs (36 in all) that would light up appropriately in order to output the content of the computer’s memory and registers—again in binary—0 when off and 1 when lit up!

I remember reading the article and thinking, wow, it would be cool to build one of these and play around. But I was concerned first and foremost with getting my problem sets successfully completed; Gates, on the other hand, is said to have had a rather different reaction… Gates' friend, Paul Allen, reportedly saw the article first and ran through Harvard Square with the Popular Electronics magazine to wave it in front of Bill Gates' face: "Look,” he supposedly said, “it's going to happen! I told you this was going to happen!”

Somehow, these two young men could sense that the home computer market was about to explode and that someone would need to make software for the new machines. Within a few days, Gates is said to have called MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), the makers of the Altair. He told the company that he and Allen had developed software for the programming language BASIC that could be used on the Altair. But this was a lie. They had not even written a line of code. They had neither an Altair nor the chip that ran the computer. The MITS company did not know this and they were very interested in seeing BASIC.

So there was a huge problem that Bill Gates and his buddy needed to overcome—they could not get their hands on an Altair Computer! The pent-up, worldwide demand for this affordable personal computer kit was enormous and unpredicted; the company, MITS, had hundreds of orders just two weeks after the article appeared, and the inventory quickly vanished. Even if you could buy one, the probability of building it successfully wasn’t all that great, since the assembly instructions were complex, the soldering was challenging, and sometimes the parts were defective.

So 19-year-old Bill Gates did the next best thing. As I watched, from a distance, in awe, Gates wrote a program on Harvard’s research computer that simulated the precise behavior of the Altair computer; after all, the complete specifications for this machine were published in Popular Electronics. I observed Gates in the Aiken Lab, night after night, a full-time student who was completely blowing off his classes and occasionally catching some sleep on one of the work tables.  “What a nerd, what a geek, what a knucklehead!” I remember thinking at the time. Who knew?!?!

With this “virtual” personal computer now running, Gates and Allen worked zealously on the BASIC software they had promised. Eight weeks later, Paul Allen flew to MITS to test their BASIC interpreter. Entering their program into the company's Altair was the first time Allen had ever touched one. If the Altair simulation he designed or any of Gates' code was faulty, the demonstration would most likely have ended in failure and the world today might be very different. This was not the case, and the program worked perfectly right away … and so the personal computer software market was born. And within a year, Bill Gates had dropped out of Harvard. And no, thank goodness, Gates did not ask me to join him in Albquerque, New Mexico. I say “thank goodness,” because I would have certainly declined, as my parents would have killed me for dropping out of Harvard; and then I would not be here delivering this speech this evening!

I know the other 25-year honorands here tonight will readily agree with me that one of the great joys of teaching at Harvard, and at the Extension School in particular over the years, is without a doubt the extraordinary students we come into contact with. While Bill Gates might be the ultimate case of this, let me mention just one other individual, a former student of mine, whom I recall with great fondness. (Yes, it’s also true that open enrollment also produces some extraordinarily odd students as well, such as the two creepy ladies who used to sit in the front row of my Science Center lecture hall courses, semester after semester, while gazing up at me in the most peculiar, almost maternal fashion. Fortunately, such cases are rare.)

More than ten years ago, a rather interesting and intense young woman named Latanya Sweeney arrived at my office on a muggy spring afternoon, wanting detailed information about courses that the Extension School was offering in computer science. Ms. Sweeney was clearly a very bright individual; in chatting with her, I learned she and her close friend, Sylvia Barrett, had dropped out of MIT as undergraduates in their sophomore year (just as Gates had done at Harvard), and after some success as entrepreneurs in the burgeoning computer industry, they decided it was time to complete their undergraduate degrees (the lack of which they felt might prevent them from advancing professionally).

I encouraged Latanya to enroll in my Extension School computer science courses, which she did, and only one year later she was working for me as a teaching fellow in these courses (and receiving outstanding evaluations—straight 5.0s on a scale of 5). The year after that Latanya was also a teaching fellow for my Harvard College course and Summer School courses, and collaborating with me on research. Latanya graduated cum laude with her ALB in computer science from the Extension School in 1995 and gave a very touching undergraduate Commencement address. Perhaps some of you in this room heard Latanya’s speech, or even knew her.

From here Latanya Sweeney actually went back to MIT, where she earned a master’s degree in 1997; and in 2001 she became the first black female to earn a PhD in computer science from MIT. She is currently an associate professor of computer science and of technology and policy at Carnegie Mellon University. In addition, she is the director of the Laboratory for International Data Privacy, also known as the Data Privacy Lab, at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science.

Dr. Sweeney’s principal area of expertise is privacy research, in which she develops algorithms and technology that makes available such data as medical records, while protecting the identities of the subjects of the data. This is critically important work, as one of the fastest growing crimes in the United States is that of identity theft. Latanya has received many awards and honors for her research, and when I last viewed her website, Latanya’s list of papers, publications, and invited talks took up several screens in my browser. Through all of her successes, however, she has never forgotten her Extension School roots, and she is one of those former students whom I will always look up to with enormous pride.

As I look beyond my teaching and reflect on my more than a quarter century at Harvard, I must say that the initiative that gives me the greatest sense of satisfaction and accomplishment is one that I started as a small experiment a few years ago but which has allowed the Extension School to evolve into a new era. I am referring to our online courses, perhaps the most strategically important component of continuing education both nationwide and here at Harvard. No longer does our Extension School operate “under the radar” and by stealth in the evening hours. Instead we now collaborate in critically important ways with daytime, Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) courses, and through this work, we have won the favorable attention of Harvard’s leadership: from the Office of the President, to the offices of the Provost, the Dean of the Faculty, and now a growing number of senior faculty.

The Extension School can offer a richer, wider selection of courses from some of the very best Harvard has to offer and can make these courses available to students everywhere: from US military personnel in war zones, to single working mothers living in the Boston area who might not be able to attend class in person every week. We will soon be expanding our production facilities at One Story Street, and there remains much work ahead regarding basic research on the pedagogy of teaching adult learners at a distance. I am deeply indebted to a number of my colleagues for their hard work in this area, particularly to the insightful contributions by my spouse, Dr. Catalina Laserna, senior research analyst at the Division of Continuing Education, who coauthored a growth strategy report for distance education several years ago and whose idea it was for us to offer daytime FAS courses online.

In closing, let me repeat the oft-quoted remark by Sir Isaac Newton, who wrote the following in a letter to fellow English scientist Robert Hooke around 1675: “If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulder of giants.” I actually prefer the slightly twisted version of this quote, concoted by Hal Abelson, a distinguished MIT professor of computer science who cotaught an online course at Extension this year. His version: "If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders."

In either event, there are four such Harvard giants I wish to acknowledge publicly: first, Dr. Michael Freeman, my PhD advisor, who unselfishly guided my doctoral research but who died tragically at a young age.  Secondly, Dr. Paul Bamberg, senior lecturer in mathematics at Harvard University, who phoned me at Boston College in the spring of 1982 and convinced me to return to Harvard. I cotaught with Bamberg for a number of years, and I must say that Paul is directly responsible for many of the things I do well in my teaching. Thirdly, our own Dean Mike Shinagel, who has given me the opportunity and freedom all these years to innovate with technology at the Harvard Extension School. And finally, to Profressor Thomas J. C. Raymond, who was honored at this event last year as a 25-year honorand but who passed away last fall at the age of 88. Tom helped mentor me in a number of important ways over the years, not the least of which was his godfatherly role in my marriage to the striking woman in the orange dress sitting up here.

Congratulations to this year’s graduating students and to all the alums here this evening. And here’s to the next 25 years!

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