Damrosch acknowledged that the department has lost "a number of wonderful people in recent years."

He said the fact that Masten is only 33 years old and that Harvard cannot afford to take any risks in granting tenure because its English department is so small may have been factors in the decision to deny him tenure.

Many junior faculty looked to Masten, who came to Harvard in 1991 immediately after receiving his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania, as an example of someone who could be tenured from inside the department, according to Ann Pellegrini '86 and William R. Handley, both assistant professors of English.

"Here was a perfect opportunity to use Jeff as a worthy example and say, 'See we do give tenure,'" Handley said.

In one case, senior faculty members in the English department told a young scholar who was weighing a job offer here to watch Masten, because he was thought likely to receive tenure, a gesture which would show that the University was improving its track record of tenuring from the inside.

Last year, Harvard made job offers to four young scholars, but only one, Pellegrini, accepted.

Pheng Y. Cheah, a graduate student at Cornell University, was one of the candidates who went elsewhere. He will begin an assistant professorship at Northwestern in January.

Pheng said that some senior faculty members, including Damrosch, told him the University was in the process of changing its policy and that "Jeffrey Masten was likely to get tenure."

During a lunch last year with three junior faculty members, Pheng said, they painted a bleak picture of what it was like to be junior faculty at Harvard.

"It was telling that when I...gave my job talk at Northwestern, most of the senior faculty in the department were at my talk," he said. "When I visited Harvard, however...apart from the members of the hiring committee, only three or four of the senior faculty members were there."

He added that almost every faculty member at Cornell told him he had "made the right decision" not to accept Harvard's offer.

Betsy J. Erkkila, chair of the English department at Northwestern, said Masten "was being identified as the person who was going to change the system."

Calling Northwestern's English department "intellectually vibrant," Masten said he is happy to be teaching there.

He said he hopes, however, that Harvard will improve its system by making the position of associate professor tenured in order to give junior faculty "a rational expectation of tenure, a fighting chance."

He also said he wonders what signal the decision will send to untenured junior faculty who are doing scholarship and teaching in queer studies, since one of his primary fields of inquiry is the history of sexuality.

Pellegrini, who teaches English 197: "Introduction to Gay and Lesbian Studies," echoed his concern.

"This could, to some, appear as a caution against particular forms of analysis," she said