[1] Her current research focuses on the changing nature of relations between citizens and states in Asia, and on the forces that shape civil society over time.
[2] In the spring of 2008, the Japanese government acknowledged Pharr's life's work by conferring the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, which represents the third highest of eight classes associated with this award.
Accompanying the badge of the order was a certificate explaining the award as recognition of the extent to which Pharr has "contributed to promoting intellectual exchange between Japan and the United States of America, and to guiding and nurturing young Japanologists.
Talking with her judo classmates and venturing in their company for sushi piqued her interest sufficiently to spur her to take courses on Japanese society and politics with James William Morley, Herbert Passin, and, later on, Gerald Curtis.
[2] While completing her dissertation, she launched her career at the Social Science Research Council in New York, where from 1974 to 1976 she served as staff associate for its Japan Committee, a post later held, coincidentally, by her Reischauer Institute colleague Theodore C.
[6] As one of only 41 female tenured professors in the early 1990s, she could only acknowledge that "in many ways Harvard is very much a male institution," which makes her role in the university's Committee on Women all the more significant.