Since 2000, he has been the director of the Center for Hellenic Studies, a Harvard-affiliated research institution in Washington, DC. He is the Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative literature at Harvard, and continues to teach half-time at the Harvard campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. From 1994 to 2000, he served as Chair of the Classics Department at Harvard University. He was Chair of Harvard's undergraduate Literature Concentration from 1989 to 1994. He served as the president of the American Philological Association in the academic year 1990-91.