"[It's important that] we don't duplicate what's already being done in American Civ.," he says.

Ph.D. candidates in the History of American Civilization must fulfill five requirements: American history; American literature; a subfield such as law, education or religion; a field for intensive study, such as Afro-American history or women's literature; and a field from outside the United States.

Appiah says he envisions a program with roughly half the requirements in related fields, such as literature or philosophy, in addtion to courses and seminars in Afro-American studies.

"Many of our graduates will most likely end up in departments of history, literature or sociology [and not Afro-American studies]," he says. "We want to make sure they [have] the necessary courses and preparation."

Gates agrees that the program should have a strong disciplinary base.

"There is no black historiography without historiography," Gates says.

But other leaders in the field do not agree with Harvard's proposed interdisciplinary approach.

"We argue here at Temple that African-American studies is a discipline with unique theoretical and methodological attributes," says Molefi K. Asante, Chair of the Department of African-American Studies at Temple University, the largest such graduate department in the country.

"My one wish for Harvard is to put all their marbles in Afro-American studies and fight to get the discipline recognized in a legitimate way," Asante says.

"I fear the 'old' departments [such as English or sociology] will get credit for their successes. It's what we all committing 'discipline suicide,'" Asante says.

Gates says he wants Harvard's program to be different from Temple's "Afro-centric" program. "We want a real alternative," he says.

Harvard's program, reflecting the strengths of the department, will also focus less on public policy and more on true academic scholarship.

"I don't think we'll be training people who will focus on the applied side," Appiah says.

"We're rather heavy on the conceptual size--we do have two philosophers [in the department]," he says.

The program at Harvard will also likely start out relatively small. Appiah expects the first class of graduate students to be "somewhere in the range between three and 10."