President Neil L. Rudenstine last week denied tenure to Jeffrey A. Masten, the only junior faculty member in the last seven years to be recommended for promotion by the Department of English and American Literature.

Leo Damrosch, Bernbaum Professor of Literature and chair of the English department, confirmed that Masten, Cowles Associate Professor in the Humanities, received a "very strong departmental recommendation."

"Here was somebody that everybody admired and he'd made a very impressive contribution as a teacher and as a scholar and he's very well recognized in the field," Damrosch said.

In fact, many of Masten's colleagues said they expected him to receive tenure and finally change Harvard's image as an institution that fails to recognize the talents of its junior faculty.

Rudenstine did not return a phone call last night. Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles did not respond to an e-mail message from The Crimson yesterday.

Some of the most prominent Renaissance scholars in the country yesterday called Masten a "rising star" and said it was a "great loss" to Harvard that he has accepted an offer of tenure at Northwestern University.

"Jeffrey's one of the most exciting young scholars working today in the Renaissance," said David Scott Kastan, professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University and general editor of the Arden Shakespeare series. "He's already important and will continue to grow in importance."

Masten's undergraduate course offerings included English 125: "Renaissance Drama," English 126: "Shakespeare, and Company," and English 189: "The Drama of Homosexuality."

Stephen J. Greenblatt, one of the foremost Renaissance scholars, who this year accepted a full-time professorship at Harvard, said he supported Masten's appointment and regrets the decision by the University.

He praised Masten's scholarship, which combines "the history of sexuality and the history of textuality in the 17th century."

"There's a policy question...at Harvard in which some very talented people do not get tenure," he said. "This is a disagreeable phenomenon."

Last night, Masten said he was "very happy to have had strong support from the chair and from my Renaissance colleagues."

Many professors at Harvard and other universities said Masten's case would damage Harvard's already-struggling effort to attract the best young professors and would destroy the morale of junior faculty in the English department, who had high hopes that he would receive tenure here.

Phillip Brian Harper, who left Harvard in 1995 to become a tenured associate professor of English at New York University, said that although junior faculty at Harvard have the advantage of the University's material resources and prestige, they are "profoundly devalued."

"When I was there I felt as though everyone at that institution participated in the devaluating of junior faculty," he said. "I cannot emphasize enough how intellectually debilitating, how morally debilitating it is to be a junior faculty at an institution where you are almost guaranteed that you are not going to be allowed to stay."

Masten said he regrets that Harvard, "through a failure to tenure from within, simply let evaporate the intellectual vibrancy represented by a list that includes Phil Harper, Meredith McGill, Wendy Motooka and Lynn Wardley. It's a distinguished diaspora."