And although the Verba report has yet to be released, many say that the government professor's experience with the ins and outs of the Harvard bureaucracy will help once the report's conclusions are debated before the full Faculty later this spring.

As director of Harvard's library system, Verba is responsible for maintaining and improving the world's largest private collection of books. And with space running out in Widener and the cost of books rising rapidly, that is no easy task.

But Verba says he approaches the library job in the same way that he looks upon committee work. "Like many big issues at Harvard--particularly issues that involve the faculty and education...most decisions are made by some process of discussion and cooperation and consensus-building," he says.

And in addition to the list of offices on his resume, some say that Verba's scholarly interests also made him a natural choice for Spence when the dean was forming the affirmative action committee.

"As a citizen, I've always been concerned with equality, with issues of social fairness," Verba says. "I think almost all of the books I've written which are of political science research deal with issues of equality."

Verba has written extensively on social, political and economic equality. Equality in America: The View from the Top, which Verba co-authored in 1985, analyzes how the inequalities inevitably arising from capitalism can be reconciled with the equality which must be the root of democracy.

In a passage on the United States which could forbode the challenge ahead for Verba and his committee at Harvard, Verba wrote, "for a nation so taken with equality, there is a striking degree of contention over the goal. Americans can agree on equality only by disagreeing on what it means."

But while the faculty is sure to disagree about the recommendations that Verba and his fellow committee members make, it is likely that Verba will maintain his high-profile status in FAS.

As Verba says, "The trouble with this University is if they give you a miserable and thankless job, the only reward they ever give you is a more miserable and thankless job."