Four new Harvard Academy Scholars -- Oleg Kharkhordin, Michael Montesano, Nader Sohrabi, and Richard Turits -- have been named by the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. Selected from an extremely competitive international applicant pool of scholars whose work combines disciplinary excellence in the social sciences with an in-depth grounding in particular regions or countries, they have each received a two-year research fellowship at Harvard. These new scholars will join returning fellows John Harrington, Victoria Murillo, Daniel Posner, Steven Wilkinson, and Elisabeth Wood. Saadia Pekkanen and Veljko Vujacic will return in the spring term.

Oleg Kharkhordin recently received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California at Berkeley, where he completed his dissertation, "Reveal, Denounce, Excommunicate: The Religious Origins of the Soviet Individual and Collective." Hailing from Moscow, Russia, Oleg studied, respectively, for a B.A. and an M.A. in political economy at Leningrad University and the Institute of World Economy and International Relations at the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, Moscow. His research at Harvard will focus on the networks of industrial enterprises and financial institutions that have recently emerged in post-Soviet Russia and how they relate to other networks in such areas as Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe.

Michael Montesano is a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department at Cornell University. During 1992 and 1993 he was based at the Chulalongkorn University Social Research Institute in Bangkok doing research for his doctoral thesis, "The Commerce of Trang, 1930s-1990s: A Study of Market Society in the Making of Modern Thailand." His work focuses on the social and commercial history of 20th-century Thailand, and the economic determinants of social, political, and cultural change in modern Southeast Asia. From 1983 to 1985, Montesano was a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Phang Nga Province, Thailand.

Richard Turits is a Ph.D. candidate in Latin American and Caribbean history at the University of Chicago. His doctoral thesis is entitled "The Foundations of Despotism: Peasants, Property, and the Trujillo Regime in the Dominican Republic, 1930-61." His research focuses on hegemony in nondemocratic regimes; Dominican history, including land reform, peasants, and the social basis of the Trujillo dictatorship; nationalism and the cause and effect of the 1937 Haitian massacre; and the history of Dominican constructs of race and color. Turits has been accepted as an assistant professor in history at Princeton University, where he will teach from 1997 to 1999 before returning for the second year of his Harvard Academy fellowship.

Nader Sohrabi received his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Chicago. His thesis was entitled "Historicizing Revolutions: Constitutional Revolutions and State Formations in Iran and the Ottoman Empire with Comparisons to Russia and Japan." Sohrabi has deferred his fellowship for one year.

It is the intent of the Academy Scholars Program to identify some of the very brightest younger scholars whose work combines disciplinary excellence in the social sciences with an in-depth grounding in particular countries or regions. The Academy Scholars are a select group of individuals who show promise of becoming leading scholars at major universities. They are appointed and supported by the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies to provide opportunities for advanced work at Harvard University.

Those selected as Academy Scholars are given time, guidance, access to Harvard facilities, and substantial financial assistance as they work for two years conducting either dissertation or postdoctoral research in their chosen fields and areas. The Senior Scholars, a distinguished group of senior Harvard faculty members, act as mentors to the Academy Scholars to help them achieve their intellectual potential. During 1996-97, the Senior Scholars are Robert H. Bates, Eaton Professor of the Science of Government; Timothy Colton, Morris and Anna Feldberg Professor of Government and Russian Studies; Roderick MacFarquhar, Leroy B. Williams Professor of History and Political Science; Edward Roger Owen, A.J. Meyer Professor of Middle East History; Susan Pharr, Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Studies; Amartya Sen, Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and of Philosophy; and Ezra Vogel, Henry Ford II Professor of Social Sciences.

The Academy Scholars program has been made possible through the generous support of founding benefactor and Harvard-educated scientist and industrialist Ira Kukin and grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Andrew Mellon Foundation. Samuel P. Huntington, the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor, is the new chair of the Academy Scholars program, and Ashutosh Varshney has been named the new faculty associate and academic coordinator. Chester Haskell continues as the executive secretary. The deadline for next year's program is Oct. 11, 1996. For more information, call Beth Hastie at 495-2137.