The Government Department has suffered the loss of several scholars in recent years, including the departure of former senior faculty member Morris P. Fiorina, who left his post as Thomson professor of government to take a tenured position at Stanford last year.

However, MacFarquhar said the two most recent promotions were not simply an effort to fill these vacated spots.

"Johnston and Moravcsik had reached the point at which tenure review normally takes place and that was why we reviewed them," he said.

Moravcsik specializes in European integration, while Johnston's area of expertise is East Asian foreign policy with a focus on China.

Moravcsik said that he "would like to help the department to teach students to impose more rigor on the use of historical methods in political science."

Moravcsik is currently spending the semester in New York City, mostly at NYU and Columbia, working on his research on the origins of international human rights regimes. In the past, he has taught at least one junior seminar each year.

Every other year, the course has been on the European Union and next semester the subject will be international human rights.