Hauser cancels Harvard Extension School class

Harvard psychology professor Marc Hauser will not be teaching a Harvard Extension School class on Cognitive Evolution that was scheduled to start today, or a spring class called "The Moral Sense: From Genes to Law."

Hauser, who was found by an internal Harvard investigation to have engaged in scientific misconduct, is on a one-year leave from research and teaching duties in the university's main Arts and Sciences school, but the Globe reported earlier this month that he still planned to teach in the extension school.

But the extension school sent an e-mail to students who were enrolled in the class explaining that the course has been cancelled "at the request of the instructor, Professor Marc Hauser."

"Because of the controversy surrounding the investigation, I have decided that the best thing for the students is that I not teach at the Extension School until things conclude with the case," Hauser wrote in a statement included in the e-mail. "Given my great desire to teach, I look forward to sharing my knowledge of these disciplines in the future."

In answer to an e-mail from a reporter, Hauser said the cancelled classes will have no impact on his plans to return to teaching a year from now for either the college or the extension school.

"As my note said, I am deeply saddened and disappointed that I won't be able to teach but am looking forward to the fall of 2011," Hauser wrote.

The editor of a journal that published a paper that Hauser and two co-authors have retracted, said it would have been inappropriate for Hauser to teach at Harvard now. "I do believe somebody who the university has accused of misconduct is, by definition, not an ambassador for that university, and putting that person in the position where they have an ambassadorial role ... is really quite extraordinary," said Gerry Altmann, editor of the journal Cognition.