THE RETURN OF A professor punished two years ago by the University for sexually harassing a female subordinate has sharply divided the Government Department.

Although department officials and graduate students on the department's sexual harassment committee mutually condemn sexual misconduct, the students charge--with some validity--that the department has refused to protect them--or to let them protect themselves--against the fallout of sexual harassment cases.

The students specifically charge that the department, in assigning alleged sexual harassers to teach required or effectively required courses, could infringe upon their moral choice to disassociate from such professors. In fact, they say, in at least one case the department has done just that.

Although the controversy first arose as a hypothetical problem nearly two years ago, it was revived this fall when Latin American politics specialist Jorge I. Dominguez returned from a year's leave of absence. Dominguez was assigned to co-teach a seminar on comparative politics--the only course, students and department officials agree, which is designed to prepare graduate students for their general exams in the popular field. Students call the course "de facto required," though it is not specifically mandated to earn a degree.

The Government Department--the only one at Harvard ever to face public cases of sexual harassment by permanent faculty members--has become the focus of campus-wide and national attention.

And faculty members, particularly Chairman Robert D. Putnam, have spent a considerable amount of time and energy trying to rid the department of this sexual harassment legacy. Committees have been established, counselors have been designated, firm statements condemning such abuse of power have been issued. In fact, Putnam admits, some professors criticize him for spending too much time on the sexual harassment issue, which he inherited when he became chairman last fall.

But such administrative decisions represent nothing more than the least the University should do. Such directives may help protect students from sexual harassment in the future, but they wholly disregard valid student fears that the past has caught up with the present.

AS A HUMAN BEING, a professor should know his ethical duty not to threaten or harass another human being. As a member of the Harvard faculty, he should also be acutely aware of his academic responsibilities not to abuse his power and status. When a faculty member has committed what by the University's (and our society's) standards is a morally objectionable act, members of the academic community are perfectly justified in hesitating, to consider him "just another professor."

He is not--at least not initially. The ability to return to the University and blend in among the faculty in students' eyes is a quality that must be earned; this status of normality cannot be magically conferred upon him simply because the University has levied what it considers sufficient discipline.

No degree of sanction--especially when handed down behind the closed doors of University Hall--is sufficient to assure students that "once a sexual harasser" does not necessarily mean "always a sexual harasser." Until an accused professor has proven that he will not abuse his authority, students should not feel compelled to sit in his classroom.

The sexual harassment committee members propose--and several graduate and undergraduate organizations collectively agree--that for five years after a sexual harassment finding is made students should have the choice to avoid all contact with the accused professor.

This is not an outlandish request. Our nation's courts parole prisoners solely on the condition that they prove, for a specified period of time, that they are capable of adhering to society's legal standards.

In theory, at least, one might detect a double standard.

But the issue is not so simple. "Paroling" professors found by the University to have committed sexual harassment would invite a host of logistical problems.

One of the stickier problems has in fact cropped up in this year's protest over the comparative politics seminar. The course is not required. But it is, students say, effectively required because the material is essential to success on the general exam in comparative politics.