Despite his high standing among other faculty members, Rosovsky says the temporary status of his appointment has made his job more difficult. He is anxious for the term to end.

"It is an intensely political job," he says. "When you are in for a year, you are a lame duck. It's harder to get people to serve as chairmen of departments because they say to you 'you'll never have an opportunity to be grateful to me."

But Rosovsky's colleagues say that it is the dean himself, not other professors, who is creating the lame duck label.

"Lame duck is not the way you are perceived but how you perceive yourself," says one observer. "It is more in his mind than anyone else's."

Whatever "difficulties" Rosovsky says he may have faced, the year was hardly an unproductive one.

The University made 22 senior appointments this year, including several in Afro-American Studies and History, which have been lacking faculty in recent years. In particular, Rosovsky helped engineer the appointment of preeminent scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., who will become the chair of Afro-Am in the fall.

Rosovsky credits Spence for laying much of the groundwork for this faculty growth and a national economy for making Harvard look more attractive. Yet he is clearly proud of his work: "the Faculty has been strengthened," he says.

Protests

It hasn't all been fun and games. Rosovsky came under fire from Afro-Am protesters this fall, when no appointments had been made and only one tenured professor remained in that department.

After a series of rejections last spring, this semester spelled rebound for the Afro-Am Department. In addition to Gates, two more senior appointments in the department are likely to be made.

Duke Professor K. Anthony Appiah is currently weighing a tenure offer from the University, and Wisconsin Professor Franklin D. Wilson may soon also receive an offer.

Still, Afro-Am concentrators don't give Rosovsky high ratings. Jeanne F. Theoharis '91, an Afro-Am concentrator and one of the students who protested the dearth of faculty hiring this fall, calls Rosovsky a "paradox."

Although publicly Rosovsky said he is supportive of Afro-Am, Theoharis says that the dean was not truly committed to the department. Indeed, Theoharis says that the administration should not claim credit for Afro-Am's turnaround.

"They got lucky that Gates said yes," says Theoharis. "It wasn't that they were working so hard."

Budget Cuts