Although Benhabib had stopped teaching such courses several years before she left-in part so that she could chair Harvard's Committee on Social Studies-her decision to leave suggested to many that the department would continue to lack such a program of courses for its graduate students.

University of Chicago Professor Robert B. Pippin, like Benhabib, is considered one of the country's foremost experts on European continental writers-and was offered a tenured post at Harvard last year but declined it, mostly for personal reasons. He says course offerings account for much of the difference between Chicago's programs on German writers and Harvard's.

At Harvard, he says, "the Faculty don't teach that sort of line of thought very regularly."

Though he admits to a certain pro-Chicago bias, Pippin insists that Chicago's course offerings make its program superior.

"If you are interested in 19th and 20th century German and European thought...I don't think there's much question that Chicago's a better place to come."

And to Liebert, at least, being able to take courses in a field like German political theory is essential.

"It's actually taught in classes elsewhere," he says when describing why he chose to study with Chicago's German theory experts rather than Harvard's.

So far the department seems to recognize the need to replace Benhabib quickly. MacFarquhar says a committee, still in its infancy, has been formed to search for her replacement.