Embattled Department Searches for Faculty

When the Afro-American Studies Department extended a tenure offer to a University of Wisconsin literary scholar this year, administrators and members of the department--typically close-mouthed about appointments before they are finalized--were eager to tout the move.

Trying to combat what they said were misperceptions about the department's vitality, administrators and the department's chair, Werner Sollors, made a concerted effort to publicize the possibility of Nellie Y. McKay's arrival at Harvard.

McKay says she still has not decided whether she will accept the offer, but officials say they are trying to convince her to start teaching at Harvard in the spring of 1990.

Yet even if McKay accepts the post, students and some faculty members say the department's curriculum will still not be able to meet the needs of the growing number of undergraduates who want to take courses in the field.

"We could double the number of courses in Afro-Am these days and still have the students to fill them," says Assistant Professor of Afro-American Studies and History David W. Blight, who will leave Harvard this fall for a tenure-track position at Amherst.

And some student activists have taken up the cause of strengthening the Afro-Am Department, recalling the spirit of its founding 20 years ago at the insistence of Black students.

"I think the administration is very concerned with image and perception right now," says former president of the Black Students Association (BSA) Robert L. Henry '90, "and I think that they are fully aware that students around the country are able to raise the level of awareness at Harvard and in the nation on these issues."

In fact, BSA members met with Dean of the Faculty A. Michael Spence several times this year to press their demands for a stronger Afro-Am department, Henry says.

The students' demands are straightforward: Hire more professors for the department and increase the number of course offerings.

But even such apparently simple requests are difficult for the Afro-Am Department to meet. Because of the protracted tenure process in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the difficulty of luring already-established scholars to Cambridge, the department has not made a senior-level appointment since Sollors in 1980.

And even if McKay, whose appointment would be a joint one with English and American Literature, accepted the offer, she would become only the department's third tenured member.

The department, meanwhile, will be left with only two junior members next year when Blight leaves. One of those, Assistant Professor of Afro-American Studies and Sociology Roderick J. Harrison '70-'71, was denied promotion to the associate level and will depart after next year.

"The Afro-American Studies Department is more of a skeleton than anything else," says Henry, an English and American Literature concentrator who says he has not taken any Afro-Am courses. "The Afro-American Studies Department has fewer faculty members now that when it was first created. It has fewer course offerings than it did 20 years ago."

Aside from tutorials, the department offered seven courses during the past year--an improvement, albeit a small one, from the three it offered the previous year.

But DuBois Professor of History and Afro-American Studies Nathan I. Huggins, one of the two senior members in the department and its former chair, says Afro-Am suffers more from an image problem--fed by negative press and BSA politics--than from structural flaws.

"Outside the department, BSA has its own agenda, and it needs issues, and Afro-American Studies Department is an issue," says Huggins. "It's a standard, regular issue for it. I haven't any problem with that. If you're a student organization you need to have some issues."

Huggins says much of the criticism directed against the department is misguided. "I would say right now, without any sense of equivocation, in terms of departments, the Afro-American Studies Department at Harvard is better at this time than any other department or any other program in the country," Huggins asserts.

That definition, he claims, is not based on faculty appointments but rather on the quality of the faculty and the numbers of related courses taught throughout the curriculum. While he says "that doesn't mean that we have a lot more people," Huggins adds that the department is still strong.

As evidence of this strength, department members point to the growing list of related courses offered by other departments which count for Afro-Am credit. Specifically, they cite the popularity of Literature and Arts A-50, "Black Women Writers," and other courses dealing with questions of ethnicity and Afro-American culture.

There were 16 such courses offered this year.

And Spence says that list of courses may grow longer as FAS implements a new affirmative action plan designed to increase the number of minority professors. "There's a reasonable chance some of those people will indeed strengthen the field," says Spence.

But the dean says there are no plans to significantly expand the Afro-Am Department.

And right now the department is still struggling to hire faculty members for openings which have not been filled over the past few years.

Afro-Am is currently conducting a search to fill either a senior or junior slot in the social sciences, Huggins says. And Sollors has said that a joint appointment is in the works with the Music Department to replace the retired ethno-musicologist Eileen J. Southern.

It is no easy task for the department to fill those empty posts. Earlier this year, Columbia literary scholar Arnold Rampersad rejected a Harvard tenure offer, citing personal reasons for remaining in New York.

And despite Blight's departure, there are no new junior faculty on the way for next academic year, professors say. They stress, however, that two visiting professors--former Civil Rights leader H. Julian Bond and Amherst scholar David W. Wills--are slated to teach in the department next year and will help round out its curriculum--at least temporarily.

Bond, who will teach courses on the Civil Rights Movement and on Black politics in the South, was recruited as an Institute of Politics (IOP) fellow by the Kennedy School of Government before being snatched away by Afro-Am, according to Huggins and students on the IOP. And Huggins says thatpeople like Bond who are not traditional scholarscan add excitement and diversity to thedepartment.

But although Huggins emphasizes the positive inhis discussion of the Afro-Am Department, he iswilling to concede that there are sticking pointsfor Black studies at Harvard.

There's nobody that will tell you that theAfro-American Studies Department's offering isgreat. No one will tell you that the HistoryDepartment's offering is what it ought to be.Nobody's offerings are what they should be,"Huggins says.

Huggins says a Faculty-wide staffing problem isespecially acute in a small department likeAfro-Am. Furthermore, all of the department'sappointments are made in conjunction with otherdisciplines, which considerably slows the hiringprocess.

But then again, the small size of Harvard'sdepartment may ironically be a selling point whenit tries to attract scholars like McKay.

"That's not the negative because the fact is ifI were to come, I would help make it larger," saysMcKay. "That would be part of my charge. It's moreof a challenge than a detriment."

"Because it is Harvard and because it has agreat many more resources than other institutions,it has a major opportunity to be a greatdepartment," says McKay, "but it does not stack upright now because it does not have the faculty.