He recalls 1960s-era Harvard Square as a place bustling with activism. By contrast, he remembers only one protest in recent memory.

"Where have they been?" he asks. "In the old days, there used to be 25 or 30 groups out there."

College activism waxes and wanes in cycles. Ethnic studies is hardly alone as a movement at a low point. And politics, Evans says, is definitely an influence.

"Everybody from the lowest...to the highest is influenced from outside politics," Evans says. "The country is not politically active right now. Everybody is trying to become another Bill Gates."

In 1969, students were more committed to their various causes. That year saw an unusual spike in the number of protests.

At Harvard, some of these events led to the establishment of what would eventually become one of most lauded African-American studies departments in the country.

Today, their professors are known as an academic "Dream Team," featuring many prominent scholars, including W.E.B. DuBois Professor of the Humanities Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Alphonse Fletcher Jr University Professor Cornel R. West '74.

Henry Rosovosky, who was then a professor of economics and would later be dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, chaired the faculty committee that recommended Afro-American studies become an interdisciplinary program.