The department also denied tenure to 20th century Americanist A. Bradford Lee, then associate professor of history.

So, one area that remains unstaffed is 20th century American political history. For 10 years, Harvard has lacked a senior scholar in that field, since Warren Professor of American History Frank B. Freidel Jr., an expert on the New Deal, left for the University of Washington. And course offerings in that field have been sparse since Brinkley's departure.

Department officials say that it is the lack of qualified scholars that has made appointments in American history, especially 20th century political history, difficult.

"We are finding it difficult to find people who meet criteria of excellence," Bisson says.

"For the moment, we're holding the 20th century [political historian] search in abeyance," says Bisson. "We're looking hard. We're not the only major department that's looking for scholars."

Thernstrom says that other major universities such as Yale University and Berkeley lack a senior scholar in 20th century American political history.

The department is also hoping to conclude searches for a senior scholar in American history and a junior professor in history and history and literature this spring, according to Gienapp.

Contributing to the department's paralysis is an ideological battle being waged in Robinson over the direction of the American wing, say some department members.

An Americanist in the department attributes the slowness of making both junior and senior appointments to resistance among certain department members to hire scholars who specialize in fields of social and cultural history.

"[They have] trouble agreeing on candidates," he says. "There were lots of good candidates but [they were] probably not working in a field that the history department approved of."

Outside scholars say that some of the most significant work currently being done in history centers around fields in social and cultural history, including women's, labor and African-American histories.

"There is no question that the great concentration of able young people are in various area of what we might call social history--so that I think to snub those fields is to miss out on a lot of the best people to get a kind of teaching and research that gets people thinking about connection between social and political," says David Montgomery, a Yale labor historian.

And Nelson N. Lichtenstein, a professor of 20th century American history at the University of Virginia, says that Harvard's lack of senior scholars in social and cultural history "become[s] a bit of a joke" in the academic community.

Bisson acknowledges that the department is slow to promote some fields of social history.

"We are very conservative in those regards. Perhaps too conservative," says Bisson.