Afro-Am On The Rebound

The department began the year with few students and even fewer faculty members. Nine months later, it awaits the arrival of its dynamic new chair, several new professors and the only soon-to-be Harvard lecturer nominated at Cannes.

Next fall may well mark the long awaited rebirth of Afro-American studies at Harvard. The department will likely bring in five new professors--including Henry Louis Gates Jr., One of the nation's premier scholars in the field.

But it will be too late for Jeanne F. Theoharis '91, who has spent her last two years with only a solitary senior scholar in the department, who, during her final semester, was on leave.

Yet despite Afro-Am's troubles, Theoharis says she has relatively few regrets.

"I had a really good time in Afro-Am. Certainly I am jealous about all the new appointments, but I am not sure I would do it over," the senior says. "I had a really good sophomore and junior year."

An enjoyable sophomore and junior year. But this last year, says Theoharis, has been difficult. Although she herself did not participate in the November 15 University Hall sit-in, she did take part in the surrounding protests, which, she says, were draining.

"Agitating took a lot of energy that we shouldn't have had to spend. It's disgusting that it got to the point that it did," says Theoharis. "It was a hard fall for a lot of us. A hard fall that could be avoided."

Demonstrations this fall, Theoharis says, put pressure on Harvard, forcing the University to make the necessary commitment to Afro-Am. Still, the senior says, the administration should have taken more dramatic steps to secure new appointments before such student action occured.

"No one wanted to go into a black hole," says Theoharis. "[The protests] made Harvard seem more welcoming and set off the institutional apathy. It sent a real signal."

Not everyone agrees with Theoharis. Rev. Peter J. Gomes, Plummer professor of Christian morals, says that the protests were "irrelevant" to the hirings.

"Students were fundamentally misinformed, assumed the worst and responded in characteristic fashion by seizing a building and marching," says Gomes, who sat on an Afro-Am executive committee appointed by former Dean of the Faculty A. Michael Spence.

Barbara E. Johnson, who chaired the department for the last year, gives most of the credit for this springs' appointments to the University administration and to the Afro-Am executive committee. But unlike Gomes, the outgoing chair praises the protests of the fall.

"The administration was nervous that good candidates would be scared off by the protests, but it didn't happen that way," Johnson says. "It showed that students were committed to building up the program and it demonstrated their seriousness."

Thomson Professor of Government Martin L. Kilson Jr., Who also sat on this executive committee, says that it is the "managerially deft" and "intellectually acute" Johnson who deserves the praise.

"Professor Johnson is the key to the restoration of the 100 percent intellectual health of the department and she deserves full credit," says Kilson. "Johnson was an incredible conductor."

Johnson will likely remain affiliated with department, but the literary critic will not continue as chair. That job will fall to Gates, and Johnson will take her leadership talents to women's studies.

With the coming of Gates, Afro-Am will get a new beginning next year, or as Johnson says, "a fresh start."

The fresh start will begin with a move when Afro-Am leaves its present home on 77 Dunster St. to above the Bay Bank/Harvard Trust Building on Mass. Ave. It's a relocation Johnson says is unavoidable because the current space is too small and lacks a common room.

"[The new space] is not any farther," Johnson says. "We can look into the president's office."

But the space is the least of the changes. In addition to Gates and Cabot Professor of English Literature Werner Sollors, who will return from his leave of absence, two other senior scholars are likely to join the department next fall.

The University has extended an offer to Duke University Professor K. Anthony Appiah. Appiah, who currently teaches philosophy and literature at Duke, will become the department's head tutor, if he accepts the lifetime post.

In addition to the offer to Appiah, the University may extend a tenure offer to Franklin D. Wilson, a sociologist from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

The Afro-Am Department will have two junior professors as well: Phillip Harper, currently an assistant English professor at Brandeis, and James Matory, who has finished a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago.

The surprise of the year, however, has been the announcement that filmmaker Spike Lee will come to teach a course in the spring semester on film. "He wanted to have a visible appointment while he was building up the scholarly components of the department," Johnson says.

The Controversial Figure

Gates is a controversial figure, a vigorous defender of many causes from multi-culturalism to the First Amendment rights of 2 Live Crew.

At Duke, Gates' departure has stirred up a different kind of debate. Soon after it was announced that Gates would make the move to Harvard, a flier was distributed around the Duke entitled, "10 Top Reasons for Skip Gates Leaving Duke for Harvard." Two of the reasons were money.

Duke's campus newspaper, The Chronicle, wrote in a staff editorial that Gates has "done almost nothing for the university, its students or the department."

The staff editorial also warned that Harvard's new prize may be fleeting. "Harvard, if Gates ends up there, should beware: its new star is apt to skip town as quickly as he gets there."

Gates is undeniably a busy man. And he has been busy in many different places. He started off at Yale before receiveing tenure from Cornell. Although Gates was courted by Princeton and Stanford while he was at Cornell, he finally chose to move to Duke.

The three moves and the variety of offers that have come Gates' way have led some scholars to attach extra meanings to the Duke scholar's nickname, "Skip."

Kilson calls the criticism of Gates and his several moves "the idle chatter of the rascals." Kilson and other Harvard scholars seem to thinks that Gates will be around for a while. Or at the very least they are hoping very hard.

"We're as near as heaven as you can get," says Kilson. "And people don't leave heaven much--it's a rare occurrence."

In addition, some University observers say the criticism Gates received at Duke "drew blood" and the scholar will stay at Harvard because he has a tremendous amount invested. In some ways, observers say, Gates has put his reputation on the line.

Gates is apparently hard at work to live up to the fanfare around him. He has spent a great deal of time in Cambridge since accepting the appointment in February.

And they haven't been pleasure trips. Indeed, Gates cancelled several scheduled appointments to be interviewed for this article--citing pressing meetings with faculty members and University officials.

Afro-Am observers say Gates wants to find out the ins and outs, learn the culture of the faculty, and he wants to find out how things are done. He is, says Gomes, taking a crash course in the University.

"He's doing what they would call in Washington and Hollywood 'networking,'" says Gomes. "There is no manual on how to be a professor let alone the chairman of a department. He is in effect having a tutorial in the Harvard way."

The networking has begun by meeting with people--lots of people. "He is consultive and that style works here," says one observer. "He can pursuade people if he can talk to them."

Kilson and others say they have been very impressed with Gates for the amount of work he has been doing. "Gates is a workaholic who loves it and who does it with a smile on his face," says Kilson. "He is a roll-up-the-sleeves leader type. He is a queen ant and a drone combined."

It is in this spirit, says Johnson, that Gates took the job. According to acting Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky, it is the reason Harvard offered it to him in the first place.

"Gates is very energetic, very ambitious and very capable," says Rosovsky. "It's a terrific combination that the we are anxious to see succeed."

Gates' teaching load next semester will be

Rosovsky credits Spence for laying much of the groundwork for this faculty growth and a national economy for making Harvard look more attractive. Yet he is clearly pround of his work: "the Faculty has been strengthed," he says.

Even as Rosovsky tried to expand the Faculty's roster, he had to trim in other areas as a result of a budget crunch that gripped FAS and the entire University. This fall Rosovsky was faced with the unpleasant task of cutting 6 percent from departmental budgets.

Despite successful budget trimming and faculty hiring, Rosovsky himself continues to downplay his role in the past year. "I accepted and tried to operate this intricate machine," says Rosovsky. "But I didn't try to redesign the machine.