In addition to the impact on student enrollment, the string of professor departures dating back to West has also taken a toll on the Af Am department’s public image.

“I think Harvard’s Afro Am department has lost some of its luster because it has lost five major names,” says John Rickford, director of Stanford’s program in African and African American studies.

In November 1996, the New York Times described Harvard’s Af Am department as a “powerhouse” and “perhaps the most celebrated assortment of scholars in America.”

Almost a decade later, scholars across the country do not offer such a glowing assessment.

Rickford says that the department continues to be the best in the country, but that if it continues to lose professors, that might change.

“If Skip [Gates] were to leave, or if more people were to leave, than the future would be more uncertain,” he says, adding that now, “the collegiality, the feeling that you were really setting the pace for everybody else around the world [is gone].”

Bobo also acknowledges that the department is not what it once was, and that his own and his colleagues’ departures have contributed to the decline.

“Can the department recover the sense of electricity and sheer excitement circa 1996-2000? Probably not,” Bobo writes in an e-mail. “But will it continue to serve the Harvard community well and lead the nation for some time to come? Without a doubt, yes.”

Scholars at other institutions specifically criticize Harvard’s department for devoting insufficient resources to the social sciences.

According to Ralph A. Austen, co-chair of the University of Chicago’s committee on African and African American studies, Harvard’s Af Am department emphasizes cultural studies, an approach that he argues fails to address the more controversial aspects of the African American experience.

Culture is “an area where you can be very positive,” Austen says. “People here [at Chicago] would say that’s okay, but we’re more scholarly.”

Nathaniel Norment, Jr., the chair of Temple University’s African American Studies department, says his department does not look to Harvard for leadership, since Harvard focuses too much on traditional disciplines such as religion and philosophy and not enough on social activism and “the African American life situation as a unique academic discipline.”

Wilson dismisses Austen and Norment’s criticisms as “not very well informed.”

“We still have a very, very strong contingent of people who are interested in the social sciences,” he says, citing in particular Jennifer L. Hochschild, who is the Jayne professor of government and of African and African American studies, and Kimberley M. DaCosta, who is an assistant professor of African and African American Studies and of social studies.

Gates adds that Wilson himself has had a greater impact on government policy towards African Americans than any other scholar in the world.