Gates Considers Options

When DuBois Professor of the Humanities Henry Louis Gates Jr. went house-hunting in New York and New Jersey this summer, his colleagues feared he was looking to call Princeton home.

But Gates, chair of the Afro-American studies department, said yesterday that he has not looked at a house in the area since July and that he continues to struggle over his academic future—a decision he said yesterday he will make by early December.

Gates said he was invited to visit the Princeton campus this summer. It was on that trip that he examined real estate in both Princeton, N.J., and Harlem, N.Y.

“We went down there in July,” he said. “It’s normal for faculty to get an offer to go and look at the place.”

The Boston Globe reported on Nov. 3 that Gates had recently been looking for housing in the New York metropolitan area, heightening anxiety at Harvard that Gates had decided to leave.

But Gates said yesterday he is still torn.

In the meantime, colleagues in the department and the field said they are still unsure which way Gates’ decision will fall.

“We, his colleagues in the Afro-Am department, do not know for sure what his decision is or if he has indeed made it,” Assistant Professor of Afro-American Studies and English and American Literature and Language Glenda R. Carpio wrote in an e-mail. “We do know that we would be devastated if he left and have tried to show him our appreciation in many ways.”

Among other things, colleagues gave Gates an African sculpture that Carpio said “symbolizes the many qualities that make him a great leader.”

Theodore Cross, editor of the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education and a close professional friend, said Gates had expressed to him this fall an interest in finding real estate in the Princeton area.

“It was very plain he had been looking at houses,” Cross said.

But for now, colleagues and students said all they can do is continue to express their support to Gates and hope for the best.

“We have also had to respect his privacy,” Carpio said. “He has told us that he will announce his decision soon, as the department and the University would need to make arrangements if he leaves.”

Gates said he has been seriously considering Princeton’s standing offer to join its faculty since last year, when a conflict between former Fletcher University Professor Cornel R. West ’74 and University President Lawrence H. Summers led Gates to question the University’s commitment to the field of African American studies.

Since last year, however, Gates said that the president and Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby—along with many professors and students—have gone out of their way to prove Harvard’s commitment to both the department and to improving diversity at the University at large.

“Everyone’s been great from the president and Dean Kirby to my colleagues in Afro-American studies and the DuBois Institute and the students,” he said. “No one needs to do anything more. It’s great to be part of this community and feel so welcomed by it.”

Ultimately, Gates has said that his decision will depend on several personal factors, including whether he feels he can work so far away from K. Anthony Appiah, Harvard’s former Carswell professor of philosophy who now teaches at Princeton.

Gates was deeply troubled by Appiah’s departure last year, as the two are close friends and intellectual soul mates. They met as students at Cambridge University in 1973 and have spent most of their academic careers working at the same institutions.

“What I have to figure out is if I can live without Anthony Appiah, and only time will tell,” Gates said in an interview last spring.

For now, while he weighs his career options, Gates said he is trying to focus on life at Harvard.

“We have grand plans to rebuild the department and we retain our status as the greatest center for African American history and culture in the world,” he said.

—Staff writer Kate L. Rakoczy can be reached at rakoczy@fas.harvard.edu.