When Harvard's History Department offered Yale Ph.D. graduate Eric Arnesen an assistant professorship in the spring of 1987, the scholar says he was flooded with mail advising him not to accept the post.

The letters, many written by people he did not know, warned him of the dismal prospects for a junior Americanist, especially one interested in social history, at Harvard, Arnesen says. Nevertheless, he accepted the offer and arrived to a History Department reeling from public criticism over two recent tenure decisions.

"The department's reputation preceded it," Arnesen says.

Currently, Arnesen finds himself in the very predicament he had been warned of years ago. After four years of teaching a variety of courses, ranging from survey courses to courses in his specialities of African-American and labor histories, Arnesen was denied a promotion to associate professor without tenure last spring.

Arnesen and several scholars at Harvard and other universities view his rejection as symptomatic of the department's long-standing failure to promote junior faculty and its disdain for scholars pursuing non-traditional fields of social and cultural history.

Arnesen's departure will weaken the already thin ranks of Americanists, a problem many in the department and undergraduate concentrators are impatient for the department to remedy.

Arnesen points to the steadily declining numbers of Harvard undergraduates who choose to concentrate in history as further evidence of student dissatisfaction with the department.

The number of concentrators has fallen from 488 in 1986 to 330 in 1990. In addition, 48 students enrolled in junior tutorials last fall, a decrease of almost 50 percent from the previous year, according to a departmental memo tutorial coordinator Dennis Skiotis sent to Department Chair Thomas N. Bisson obtained by The Crimson.

Junior tutorials are only required for history concentrators planning to write a thesis. But enrollment in sophomore tutorials, which are required for all history concentrators, showed slight gains from last year.

The decline in junior tutorial enrollment, Arnesen says, "speaks volumes" about the fact that students are staying away from history because they are wary of the current dearth of senior American historians.

Some students interviewed earlier this month say the lack of professors affected their decisions not to concentrate in history.

"If the department had been better, I would have studied American history during my four years," says James R. Haney '94, a social studies concentrator.

Currently, there are six senior Americanists: Winthrop Professor History Stephan Thernstrom, Phillips Professor and Adams University Professor Bernard Bailyn, Professor of History William E. Gienapp, Professor of History Akira Iriye, Warren Professor of American History Ernest R. May and Trumbull Professor of American History Donald Fleming.

But Bisson, who is Lea professor of medieval history, says that though the department is "very mindful of the decline in enrollment," he maintains that "the American history department is not in crisis."

"Our only area of coverage that is less than ideal is that of 20th century political history," Bisson says.