"In the end, Harvard tried to do the right thing, though it certainly wasn't a model of effective conflict resolution--it dragged on way too long," Skocpol says.

In the meantime, Skocpol had accepted a tenured position at the University of Chicago. The University of California at Berkeley also offerred Skocpol a tenured position.

Claude S. Fischer, chairman of the sociology department at the University of California at Berkeley, says that Skocpol actually committed to coming to Berkeley, and said that she would begin teaching as of this spring.

But last October, Fischer says, Skocpol broke her promise and said that she would not be coming to Berkeley after all.

In a letter to his department explaining Skocpol's act, Fischer wrote, "I am angered and sorry to report to you that this morning I received a call from Theda Skocpol saying that she will not be coming to Berkeley after all--neither in the long term nor even for the spring. I consider this a grossly unprofessional and unethical act."

"Not only does this mean that the department is left holding the bag on three Spring courses; that we 'used' up a slot for two years in this effort; that the energy of the faculty, staff, chair, deans, and officers of the University were wasted; that graduate students were misled in making their plans; that our efforts to protect her reputation were made a mockery; and so on--it is also an explicit violation of promises made, as she herself acknowledged to me," the letter continues.

Skocpol says that she decided to turn down Berkeley for a variety of personal reasons, including the fact that she has a bad back, and that the job possibilities in California for her husband, physicist William Skocpol, were not promising.

Sorenson says he did not think that the incident at Berkeley would affect Skocpol's ability to function at Harvard. "I don't think it will have any impact on her relationships with colleagues here," he says.