Literary Expert Nixes Afro-Am Tenure Offer

A University of Wisconsin literary expert has rejected a tenure offer from Harvard's Afro-American Studies Department, marking the second time this year that an outside scholar has turned down a lifetime post from the troubled department.

Nellie Y. McKay, author of a well-regarded study of 20th-century writer Jean Tooter, recently decided against accepting the Harvard tenure offer--made last fall--and will continue teaching at Wisconsin, according to officials from both schools.

Had she accepted the post, McKay would have been the only tenured Black woman in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Harvard's Afro-Am Department, which has only two tenured faculty members and two junior professors, has had difficulty attracting outside scholars and retaining its junior faculty in recent years.

The department has not made a senior level appointment since Werner Sollors, the department's chair, was tenured in 1983. Arnold Rampersad, another Afro Am literary expert, declined an offer from the University earlier this year.

McKay's rejection represents an unexpected setback for the department, whose administrators had billed the tenure offer as part of an effort to reinvigorate Afro-Am here.

Sollors, himself a scholar of Black literature, did not return several phone calls made to his office this week.

McKay could not be reached for comment this week. But the chair of Wisconsin's Afro-American studies department said that the state school had offered her a package including pay increases, leave time and research assistants to convince her to stay at Wisconsin.

"Of course Wisconsin made a competitive offer to Nellie, and of course we would have seen [her leaving] as a severe loss," said Carl A. Grant, the department chair. He said McKay received tenure at Wisconsin after Harvard made its offer but added that her promotion "was already in the pipeline" and had nothing to do with the competition for the literary scholar.

The Wisconsin Plan

McKay's decision to stay at Wisconsin comes at a time when that school has had difficulty retaining its Black faculty, despite an ambitious affirmative action plan. Last year, Wisconsin brought in three new Black professors, but five Blacks already on the faculty departed, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Wisconsin's affirmative action plan, adopted early last year, called for the school to hire 70 new minority professors in three and a half years.

Grant said he did not see McKay's choice of Wisconsin over Harvard as a victory for his school, saying the competition for her demonstrated a larger problem in academia.

"The broader issue is a need for Black scholars and for people who are doing work in the area of Afro-American studies," said Grant. "I guess I don't look at it as a win or a loss. I'm just glad Nellie stayed here."

According to one former Afro-Am professor, the difficulties Harvard's department has had in attracting faculty are caused by the University's tradition-laden tenure system.

David W. Blight, who left a junior position at Harvard last year to accept a tenure-track post at Amherst College, said that rejections such as McKay's would not be such large blows if the tenure system at the University could make appointments more quickly and easily.

Blight said the University-wide problems were exarcerbated in Afro-Am because of its small size and unconventional fields of study.

"I was disappointed, but not surprised" at McKay's decision, said Blight, a personal friend of McKay's. "It would have been a big boost for the department."