"On the minus side, it may be that some of the things I do this year are very naive, [things] I would not have done with more experience," says Mas-Colell. "On the plus side, perhaps it's a new face on the block. Perhaps I am less conditioned by the previous way to do things."

Unique for Another Reason

The appointment is unique for another reason. Mas-Colell, a Spanish national with permanent resident status in the U.S., is considered a minority by the federal government's affirmative action criteria. There are no other minorities with the rank of associate dean or higher in FAS.

Harvard's practice of counting foreign-born scholars when compiling lists of minority faculty drew fire last year from the Minority Students Alliance (MSA), which said the University was manipulating the count to pad its numbers.

Mas-Colell, who was a member of the faculty committee which drafted a new affirmative action plan for FAS last year, says he was introduced to the debate for the first time during those deliberations.

"To my amusement I discovered last year that I qualified as Hispanic. I say `to my amusement' because I had never thought of myself as qualifying as Hispanic," says Mas-Colell. "I still think that the definition of Hispanics is somewhat curious."

Mas-Colell notes that affirmative action regulations regard native Spaniards as Hispanic, but not Brazilians.

And he adds that the dividing line between foreign-born scholars and American ethnic minorities is a hazy one.

"The community of scholars is really an international community. This is not true just abstractly--it's true very concretely," says Mas-Colell. "This country has benefited much by being a haven for foreign scholars."

Mas-Colell acknowledges that foreign scholars might not serve as role models for American minority students, but says they can still contribute to the diversity of a faculty.

"One has to consider every case on its merits," he says.