Responding to Wilson's concerns, Academic Dean for the Teaching Programs Herman B. "Dutch" Leonard said KSG administrators are concerned about the problem and committed to improving it.

" I assure you, no one in the school is either happy about or complacent about the low number of minority faculty and especially black faculty at this school," Leonard said.

As a result, he said administrators have worked to increase the number of minority appointees, in addition to looking for new ways to attract black faculty members. These techniques, he said, included looking for potential faculty members from law, business and education schools and instructing search committee members to "identify and pursue African-American candidates."

Still, Wilson said a good deal of Harvard's past and future successes in attracting prominent black faculty members come as a result of 'raiding' other schools--a prospect that he said that is unpleasant but inevitable.

Wilson himself was part of such a "raid" when he came to Harvard. During that same time, Gates also successfully lured Professor of Philosophy K. Anthony Appiah, Fletcher University Professor Cornel West '74, Professor of Sociology and of Afro-American Studies Lawrence D. Bobo, and visiting lecturer on Afro-American Studies Jamaica Kincaid to the University.

"A number of us feel guilty because there's such a concentration of African-American faculty here [at Harvard]," he said. "The only way we're going to deal with the problem is to enlarge the pool."