Harvard's inability to convince many scholarsthat its department is essential to their careersbegins to look all the more dangerous as ambitiousdepartments elsewhere prey on Harvard's governmentFaculty.

Stanford is first on everyone's mind.

"Stanford has been trying to make big raids,"says Roderick MacFarquhar, Williams professor ofhistory and political science and chair of thedepartment. "We have to guard against those sortsof moves."

And from the untenured ranks, the situation isall the more apparent.

"Let's be clear: there are a lot of gooddepartments out there and this is a competitivesituation," says J. Russell Muirhead '88, anassistant professor of government.

Fixing a Hole?

The department adamantly maintains it isworking to improve the situation in the Americansub-field.

"My main task is to restore American politics,to boost the American politics sub-field to a newhigh," MacFarquhar says.

In response to the leaves this year, thedepartment brought in five outside instructors tofill in some of the gaps.

More importantly, several searches for juniorFaculty members were authorized, and thedepartment hired two new junior professors fornext year.

Barry C. Burden will come to Harvard fromLouisiana State University, where he is currentlyan assistant professor. Burden studies publicopinion and divided government--situations whereparties must share control.

Andrea Campbell also studies public opinion andis currently a student in the political sciencedepartment at the University of California atBerkeley. She has written on political behavioramong the elderly.

"Many undergraduates are going to be veryimpressed," Skocpol says. "[Burden and Campbell]are articulate and engaging and likely to arouseinterest in the classroom."

The next step, MacFarquhar says, is to conducteven more searches, some at the senior level.

But Fiorina cautions against any prematureenthusiasm.