When he considered coming to Harvard, Appiahrecalls, some of his peers in academia questionedthe prospects of life in Boston.
"Around the country among Black people, there'sa general feeling that Boston is not hospitable inregard to race," says Associate Professor ofPsychiatry Alvin F. Poussaint, the Harvard MedicalSchool's associate dean for minority affairs.
Boston's reputation, Poussaint says, is aconcern for prospective Black students, facultymembers and businesspeople.
"I have gotten questions many times by peoplebeing recruited here...asking about the racialatmosphere in the city," Poussaint says."Frequently, they are influenced by the negativeimage that Boston has."
Appiah, who is the head tutor of the Afro-Amdepartment, says prospective recruits may havereservations about Boston's racial atmosphere. "Aswe are trying to recruit faculty to otherprograms, it will be one of the things that I'msure will come up," he says.
But Afro-Am Chair Henry Louis Gates Jr., whojoined the Harvard faculty last year, saysBoston's racial climate is significantly betterthan what he experienced elsewhere in his academiccareer.
Gates worked for several years in Ithaca, NewYork, a town he describes as "isolated anduniformly white from the snow to the people."
When he and Appiah taught together at Cornell,Gates says, they brought nine Black scholars tothe faculty. "If we could recruit Black people toIthaca, New York, we figured recruiting Blackpeople to Boston would not be so difficult," Gatessays.
When he taught at Duke University, Gatesrecalls, he found Durham, North Carolina to be"full of racist rednecks."
When he went into public with his wife, who iswhite, Gates said that he "felt like we were inthe Twilight Zone."
He doesn't get the same stares or strangeglances in Boston, he says, calling the city "avery sophisticated place," full of culturalinstitutions and academic programs related toAfro-American studies.
Many of the Black professors Harvard willrecruit, Appiah says, come from places like Durhamand Ithaca, or from New Haven, Conn., which hasracial problems of its own. They will arrive inBoston accustomed to racial tension and used toseeing few other Black faces.
"It isn't as if they're going to be coming fromsomewhere with no problems," Appiah says. "They'renot starting from scratch."