When letters from the graduate schools he had applied to in January started arriving in March, Hugh P. Liebert `01 knew his options were good.

A social studies concentrator interested in the political philosophies of German writers like Nietsche and Heidegger, and in Greek scholars such as Plato, Liebert was accepted to programs at Harvard, Yale and the University of Chicago.

Liebert had studied with-and grown to admire-many of Harvard's government Faculty, especially Kenan Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield `53.

"Mansfield doesn't write much on the Germans, but he's really more of an expert than most people who do," Liebert says.

Yet despite his attachment to Harvard's department, Liebert chose not to pursue his doctorate at Harvard. Instead, he picked Chicago.

A Flaw in the Theory

With names like Mansfield, Michael J. Sandel, Richard F. Tuck, and Dennis F. Thompson-currently an associate provost-Harvard can legitimately claim to have the best department for studying political philosophy in the country.

Until recently, at least, the Harvard department was also near the top in studies of German philosophical thought.

But when Professor Seyla Benhabib, one of the country's top scholars of German writers, decided to leave earlier this year for Yale, it left Harvard's department with few senior Faculty to offer graduate students in German political theory.

"If a graduate student had come here to study the German philosophers of the nineteenth century," says Williams Professor of History and Political Science Roderick L. MacFarquhar, the government department chair, "they certainly would have worked with Seyla."

Several members of the department emphasize Benhabib's unique role in the department.

"We don't have anyone else," says Steven R. Levitsky, an assistant professor in the department who arrived last year.

"We were extremely strong [in German philosophy] until Seyla Benhabib left," says Buttenweiser University Professor Stanley Hoffmann, a 47-year department veteran.

One of the main fallouts of Benhabib's departure may be a lack of future course offerings on German thinkers.

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.

"We want to replace her in a number of ways," MacFarquhar says of the efforts. That effort seems to be satisfying observers like Sharon R. Krause, an assistant professor who once studied under Mansfield, and is now in her first year teaching at Harvard.

"My sense is that the commitment is strong," Krause says.

Given the government department's history in filling faculty holes, however, there may be reason to wonder how quickly Benhabib's replacement will really arrive.

Recruitment Headaches

Many professors cite increasing nationwide difficulty in recruiting senior faculty as a potential obstacle in finding Benhabib's replacement.

"Virtually all I do is senior recruiting," says Pippin, the Chicago professor who directs that school's prestigious Committee on Social Thought. "It's a very difficult task these days."

The same appears to be true at Harvard. MacFarquhar, who also calls recruiting "not an easy task," reports that a recent batch of seven offers to faculty at other schools yielded only two acceptances.

Both he and Pippin say family considerations, such as finding a job for a professor's spouse, are increasingly important. Hoffmann, the Harvard department veteran, adds Cambridge's unique brand of weather to the list.

But at Harvard especially, many government professors say, the rules for hiring and promoting may be more serious obstacles.

If the government department has any trouble recruiting, it may not be its own fault.

"Harvard procedures, not those of the department, are very slow," says Hoffmann. "It is indeed infuriating sometimes to see someone you want try to get appointed."

However, at least one department member, Mansfield, says the department may also be to blame.

"The department has gotten very big," says Mansfield. "It's hard to make a problem for one part of it a concern for the whole."

The "problem" Mansfield refers to may be a weakness, widely reported in the past few years, in the department's Faculty in American politics and constitutional law. How the department has addressed these problems may suggest how well it will fill the Benhabib hole.

American Dreams

In 1999, ten members of the department teaching American classes had taken leaves of absence, severely curtailing undergraduate course offerings.

More troubling still, members of the department said they felt like the American subsection was understaffed, notwithstanding the temporary shortages.

"We need more Faculty who teach," Thomas Professor of Government Theda R. Skocpol said then. "We obviously have a problem."

Today, department members' opinions are mixed on how far the department has progressed since two years ago. No one denies, however, that the department has tried hard to improve itself.

"What I tried to suggest in 1999, and now we're well into the process, is that we need to strengthen the American subfield," says MacFarquhar now.

So far, that "process" has included hiring two new junior and two senior Americanist Faculty members during the last school year, and permission from University officials to recruit three more senior Faculty. MacFarquhar says the hiring committee for these new positions already has its short list of possible offers.

Skocpol says these moves amount to a new breath of life for the department.

"I think we're doing pretty well," she says.

Along with the new Faculty, Skocpol and Tuck, the department's director of graduate studies, say a jump in American politics graduate student enrollment this year shows that the department is moving forward.

Instead of the usual one or two students, they say, this year the department has enlisted six or seven students to study American politics.

Skocpol says she thinks there is "no question" that expanded funding for the department's Center for American Political Study (CAPS), which she directs, has improved recruitment.

CAPS gives support to research and programs for graduate students in American politics. The CAPS executive committee consists of government Faculty, as well as members of the social studies committee and the history and economics departments.

"I think the center and just the fact that we've got momentum generally, with the new hires, will help us," Skocpol says.

Yet despite Skocpol's enthusiasm, not all members of the government department seem satisfied with the scope of recent Faculty expansion.

Mansfield calls the department's Americanist offerings "far from sufficient." He cites a nagging lack of courses in "major tracks" of American government, and a lack of senior Faculty in areas such as American political parties, the presidency, and the Supreme Court.

Constitutional Crisis

For thirty years, since the departure of Professor Martin M. Shapiro, the government department has lacked a senior professor in public law-often called constitutional law.

Last year, the department made an offer to R. Shep Melnick `73, a professor at Boston College and former Harvard assistant professor, to take a tenured post at Harvard. But in a twist of Harvard's unique tenure policy-in which the University president makes all final decisions-President Neil L. Rudenstine rejected the offer to Melnick.

The failure to hire Melnick-who Mansfield says was "very foolishly denied" tenure-has left Harvard with only junior Faculty to study public law.

Associate Professor Keith J. Bybee, who studies public law, says that explaining the department's lack of senior public law Faculty often comes down to quibbling over qualifications. Several reasons, he says, could be given why any particular scholar should not be given tenure.

"Public law is kind of in the eye of the beholder," Bybee says. But he adds that this does not explain why Harvard has gone thirty years without such a professor.

"At different times in the past thirty years, there's been a sense of urgency [to find someone]," he says, even though today some of that sense of urgency may have subsided.

At the same time, Bybee cautions against reading too much into the government department's lack of Faculty in public law and other disciplines.

"Any department's going to have some holes," Bybee says, as long as different schools compete for faculty.

"It's not like only Harvard recognizes these people as great and famous."