Faculty Deans

Shirley Lee and Taeku Lee

Photo Credit: Amy Perl, amyperl.com

We are thrilled to be your Dunster House Faculty Deans! The house system
is one of Harvard’s genuine treasures, and we are honored to be a part of it.
We look forward to getting to know as many Meese as we can in the coming
year and welcome any opportunity to say hello. For now, here’s a little bit
about us.

Taeku is a political scientist and Bae Family Professor in the Government
Department. Born off an army base in Masan, South Korea, he spent nine
years in rural parts of Malaysia and immigrated to the US when he was 11.
Taeku returns to Harvard after twenty years at UC Berkeley in Political
Science and at the Law School. His teaching and research interests are in
racial and ethnic politics, public opinion and survey research, identity and
inequality, and democratic politics. (He narrowly averted his immigrant destiny
to become a physician, called to political science after finishing nearly three
years of medical school at the University of Michigan.) In his free time, he is a
crossword enthusiast, tennis junkie, and a diehard fan of the Michigan
Wolverines, Golden State Warriors, and Tottenham Hotspurs.
 

Shirley started out as a middle school math teacher in East Harlem, New
York, where she became interested in how students learn. She then focused
on improving conditions for learning while at the Education Development
Center in Newton, MA, and at the University of California, Berkeley, pursuing
questions like, “How do students integrate new information when learning in different
environments, such as science labs, museum exhibits, and robotics teams?”
Shirley is excited to be back in Cambridge and beginning a personal project
about her family’s experiences during the Korean War. She loves
tennis, traveling, and spending time with friends and family.
 

We are proud parents of two adult children, Ella and Linus Lee. Ella
graduated from UCLA ’24 (English, Creative Writing, and Asian American
Studies), and Linus graduated from WashU St. Louis ‘25 (Computer Science,
Urban Studies, Music). They both enjoy making music and being in the great
outdoors, from backpacking the Sierras to running in the redwoods. We hope
you will have a chance to meet them when they visit. We are also proud
parents of an 8-year-old calico named Daisy who is truly a scaredy cat. Coax
her out of the shadows if you can—she loves cheek and chin scratches!