The
Moral Life
Robert Coles Of Children
Moralist at Large '<

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ANYPLACE.

He is a child psychia-
trist with no practice, a
clinician with no clinic
and an untenured pro-
fessor who teaches at
Harvard's law, medical
and business schools

ings Robert Coles lectures on
OnTuesday and Thursday morn-
"The Literature of Social Reflec-
tion" to 400 undergraduates at
Harvard. In the afternoons he
teaches "Literature and Medicine" at Har-
vard Medical School, then conducts a fresh-
man seminar on George Orwell and James
Agee. Every other week he visits Duke and
the University of North Carolina, where he
is helping establish a joint center for docu-
mentary studies of the South. And that's
just his fall-semester load.
In January Coles will resume his popular
course on "Plain Doctoring," in which Har-
vard medical students make home visits in
poorer communities and write essays on
their experiences. At the Harvard Law

School, he'll lead a seminar on "Dickens
and the Law," teach "The Business World:
Moral Inquiry Through Fiction" at Har-
vard's Business School and lecture twice
weekly on "The Literature of Christian Re-
flection" to more undergraduates.
When he isn't teaching, Coles is writing.
He has published more than 900 essays,
articles and reviews over the last quarter
century, plus a shelf of books: "The Moral
Life of Children" and "The Political Life of
Children," his 35th and 36th, were pub-
lished last spring, and two more, critical
appreciations of Simone Weil and Dorothy
Day, two of the most radical religious writ-
ers and activists of the 20th century, are
due this winter.
All this from a child psychiatrist who has

'l am most certainly not a social scientist': The scholarly 'migrant worker' ina rare quiet moment at his desk in Cambridge, Mass.

40 NEWSWEEK ON CAMPUS

OCTOBER 1986