"Outside the department, BSA has its own agenda, and it needs issues, and Afro-American Studies Department is an issue," says Huggins. "It's a standard, regular issue for it. I haven't any problem with that. If you're a student organization you need to have some issues."

Huggins says much of the criticism directed against the department is misguided. "I would say right now, without any sense of equivocation, in terms of departments, the Afro-American Studies Department at Harvard is better at this time than any other department or any other program in the country," Huggins asserts.

That definition, he claims, is not based on faculty appointments but rather on the quality of the faculty and the numbers of related courses taught throughout the curriculum. While he says "that doesn't mean that we have a lot more people," Huggins adds that the department is still strong.

As evidence of this strength, department members point to the growing list of related courses offered by other departments which count for Afro-Am credit. Specifically, they cite the popularity of Literature and Arts A-50, "Black Women Writers," and other courses dealing with questions of ethnicity and Afro-American culture.

There were 16 such courses offered this year.

And Spence says that list of courses may grow longer as FAS implements a new affirmative action plan designed to increase the number of minority professors. "There's a reasonable chance some of those people will indeed strengthen the field," says Spence.

But the dean says there are no plans to significantly expand the Afro-Am Department.

And right now the department is still struggling to hire faculty members for openings which have not been filled over the past few years.

Afro-Am is currently conducting a search to fill either a senior or junior slot in the social sciences, Huggins says. And Sollors has said that a joint appointment is in the works with the Music Department to replace the retired ethno-musicologist Eileen J. Southern.

It is no easy task for the department to fill those empty posts. Earlier this year, Columbia literary scholar Arnold Rampersad rejected a Harvard tenure offer, citing personal reasons for remaining in New York.

And despite Blight's departure, there are no new junior faculty on the way for next academic year, professors say. They stress, however, that two visiting professors--former Civil Rights leader H. Julian Bond and Amherst scholar David W. Wills--are slated to teach in the department next year and will help round out its curriculum--at least temporarily.

Bond, who will teach courses on the Civil Rights Movement and on Black politics in the South, was recruited as an Institute of Politics (IOP) fellow by the Kennedy School of Government before being snatched away by Afro-Am, according to Huggins and students on the IOP. And Huggins says thatpeople like Bond who are not traditional scholarscan add excitement and diversity to thedepartment.

But although Huggins emphasizes the positive inhis discussion of the Afro-Am Department, he iswilling to concede that there are sticking pointsfor Black studies at Harvard.

There's nobody that will tell you that theAfro-American Studies Department's offering isgreat. No one will tell you that the HistoryDepartment's offering is what it ought to be.Nobody's offerings are what they should be,"Huggins says.

Huggins says a Faculty-wide staffing problem isespecially acute in a small department likeAfro-Am. Furthermore, all of the department'sappointments are made in conjunction with otherdisciplines, which considerably slows the hiringprocess.

But then again, the small size of Harvard'sdepartment may ironically be a selling point whenit tries to attract scholars like McKay.

"That's not the negative because the fact is ifI were to come, I would help make it larger," saysMcKay. "That would be part of my charge. It's moreof a challenge than a detriment."

"Because it is Harvard and because it has agreat many more resources than other institutions,it has a major opportunity to be a greatdepartment," says McKay, "but it does not stack upright now because it does not have the faculty.