Critics of the Afro-American Studies department's structure at the time suggested that such student privileges irrevocably damaged the chances of building a solid core of top-notch faculty because no professors of any stature would subject themselves to students' cross-examination. But Hall, who was a member of the student search committee for a chair, says that prospective professors actually commended what students were doing. "They may have thought it bold, but none fundamentally disagreed with it."

In fact, prospective chairs resented the "shabby treatment that Harvard extended," not the students' powers of review, Hall says. "Scholars at the time who were suddenly approached by Harvard resented, more so than student power, the fact that all of these years they had never gotten a whisper of an appointment from Harvard."

Hall says that the initial search committee, as led by faculty members, was "amorphous" in nature, and that its timing and coordination of invitations was poorly executed. The misguided search for a chair prevented a strong core of faculty members from developing in the department.

According to Hall, the reason why the faculty of the Afro-American Studies program had so few members well into the 1970s was that it "broke down at the initial chair appointment." By the time Hall left in 1969 to pursue further study at Florida State University and the University of Maryland, the position of chair was still unfilled.

When a chair was finally appointed, the choice resulted in yet another controversy. The eventual selection of Ewart Guinier, whom Hall believes was selected for his ties to the University rather than his ability to lead the department, led to a crisis of leadership, according to his colleagues.

Department members--many of whom claimed it was being woefully mismanaged by Guinier--were unable to agree on hiring and curriculum strategies.

At the time, Martin L. Kilson, professor of government, called Guinier "an intellectual and academic disgrace," while Orlando Patterson, professor of sociology, left the department.

"Guinier lacks the academic, administrative, and personal qualities for the job of chairman," Patterson said at the time. "Not having an academic or intellectual background, he is extremely insecure in his relations with qualified persons, especially any senior or potentially senior person."

While agreeing that the appointment of Guinier made executive decisions difficult, Hall said that the significance of Guinier's tenure as chair is overstated. "Guinier's tenure in the Afro-Am department may have been problematic, but the constant in the equation [of hiring policy], regardless of who was the chair, was Harvard." Hall says that prospective scholars in the department viewed Harvard's tenure policies suspiciously, and credits Harvard's recent failure to attract Afro-Am professors to the same persistent suspicion.

The department's inner turmoil resulted in a restructuring that stripped students of executive privileges in the hiring process. The department finally reached what many call an equilibrium in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with a number of appointments satisfying its concentrators.

But according to Hall, the department was never strong, and has always been composed mainly of junior faculty who, based on Harvard's tenure policy, eventually "found other places to land, and to land well."

The death of then-Chair Nathan I. Huggins, in December, 1989, was the first of a series of defeats for Afro-Am that ultimately resulted in student activism in much the same way that Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination 20 years before galvanize support for the department's creation.

The simultaneous rejection of tenure by outside scholars last year, coupled ture of Carolivia Herron, who was then professor, presented the Afro-Am department a crisis that reawakened its activist

Up until several days ago, with the Chair Werner Sollor's spring-term ahead, the department was devoid scholars and leaders. With few tenured professors and no clear leadership, the Afro-Am departments 1990 looked much like that of 1969.

Once again, student activism, sans the radicalism of the late 1960s, took center stage. Nathan Glazer, a visiting professor at the time of the initial controversy, and currently an affiliate of the Afro-Am department, responds to the inevitable compa: "The Afro-Am issue of the '60s was much tenser. The political aspect is much milder this time. The department already exists."

"Now the issue is of staffing the department," he says. "The movement is not politicized as it was. It is not to the same degree."

Although the administration last year said it supported many of the demonstrator's demands, they clearly objected to the methods of protest they chose. This negative reaction was illustrated by outgoing President Derek C. Bok in response to student demonstrations earlier this year. "I think it makes it more difficult to recruit people here because the people we want are very successful scholars," Bok said at the time.

"They do not wish to come to a place where will be perceived that they are there because of student pressure rather than because their faculty peers have decided they would like to have them for their teaching and scholarly contributions."

However, the student activism that administrators seem to resent so today acted as a crucial catalyst for change in the 1960s. "There was a role that Black militant processes played," Kilson said at a recent forum. "They put activist pressure on the American academic power structures to open up curriculum structures to Afro-American Studies."