Though Bobo currently occupies the head of the table at department meetings, he looks forward to handing that seat over to Gates when he returns from leave next year.
“I’m coming back,” Gates says. “If I were going to leave, I would have left.”
Gates also says that the department’s rift with Summers is a thing of the past.
“I think that Larry will be a great president and I enjoy working with him,” he says. “[We] have a warm working relationship.”
While enrollment numbers suggest students are losing interest in Af-Am, Gates affirms his department’s position at the pinnacle of its field.
“We have retained our number one status in the world,” he says, while admitting there is work yet to be done.
“We’re in the process of getting our feet, getting our stride,” he says.
—Staff writer William C. Marra can be reached at wmarra@fas.harvard.edu.