According to Gates, the goal of having more black female professors would be best reached most quickly by endowing new professorships in academic areas with high concentrations of minority women.

"We would like to raise funds for an incremental chair in Gender and Afro-American Studies," Gates says. He calls the seeking of funds for such a chair "our highest priority."

"I was aware of the fact that I was a pioneer," says Higginbotham, one of the most prominent scholars in Afro-American women's history, one of her passions since her days as a graduate student, before the field was as well-established as it is today.

However, others say Harvard has done well in building its Afro-American studies department and needs to expand its efforts to place minority professors in other fields so that all students, even those who might not take classes in Afro-American studies, see a minority in front of the class.

McKay charges that "just having the illustrious Professor Gates is not enough. [The University needs] faculty who work in other departments, not just Afro-American Studies."

McKay's point is underscored by the fact that many of the black male professors in FAS, as well as Higginbotham, teach in the Afro-American Studies department.

"Except for possession of the strongest black studies effort in the country, the faculty of Harvard University remains very much a white man's club," wrote the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education in its Autumn 1997 issue.

Fraser says that she would like to see more minorities in the economics department, in part because they bring a new perspective to the field.

"It's hard finding economics classes that deal with Africa and Latin America and the economics of their respective countries," she says. "I feel that having more minorities within the department would lead to diversity in the issues taught, and that in turn would give us more complete educations."

The Journal credited Princeton, the Ivy institution sharing the last place position in the quest for more black, female faculty members, with having "achieved far more success than Harvard in integrating its mainstream departments," pointing out that there are two black professors of math in tenure-track positions, while there are none at Harvard.

Calm Before the Storm?

However, some people see the trajectory of the Afro-American studies department during Gates' tenure as a herald of things to come.

"Traditionally, Harvard has moved slowly and carefully, but when it picks up, zoom!" says Cornell R. West '74, professor of Afro-American studies and the philosophy of religion. "I think that's what's going to happen.