Prominent Afro-American studies and religion scholar Cornel R. West '74 yesterday accepted a tenured professorship in the Afro-American Studies Department and Harvard Divinity School.

West, now professor of religion and director of the Afro-American Studies Program at Princeton, will arrive in July 1994 and begin teaching in the fall of 1995, said W.E.B. Dubois Professor of the Humanities Henry Louis Gates Jr., chair of the Afro-American Studies Department.

"I'm thrilled," President Neil L. Rudenstine said yesterday. "It's a superb appointment."

The appointment of West, who refused a position in the Afro-American Studies Department in 1990, is a great coup for a department which had only one tenured faculty member in 1989, Gates said.

"I think it's fair for me to say it's hard for me to think of a place that has better offerings than we do," said Gates. "And we have additional appointments to make."

West, whose research interests include religion, philosophy, sociology and popular culture, will bring a diverse social sciences background to the department, which has promised concentrators a stronger curricular focus on social issues.

"We'll develop more of a public policy focus in addition to the cultural studies focus we've been developing in the past few years," said Gates.

Despite West's prominence as a scholar--he built the well-regarded Princeton program--his appointment will not create any tensions in the Harvard department, Gates said.

"I'm a real team player," said Gates, who was recently reappointed as department chair for another three years.

West, 40, is the author of the best-selling Race Matters as well as articles and books including Prophecy Deliverance! An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity, Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America and Post Analytic Philosophy. He has taught at Princeton, Yale and Union Theological Seminary and was a visiting scholar at the Divinity School in 1984.

West, a native of Sacramento, Calif., received his graduate degrees from Princeton, including an M.A. in 1975 and a Ph.D. in 1980.