Af Am Department Chair Henry Louis Gates, Jr. said, however, that “the Afro Am Department has excellent relations with President Summers.”

Gates called Dawson’s departure “an enormous loss” for Harvard and said the scholar will be difficult to replace.

But he said the department must move on.

At the University of Chicago, Dawson will be a member of the Political Science department, where he taught before he came to Harvard. Chicago does not have an Af Am department, though it does have an Af Am degree program and a center for race, politics, and culture studies.

“The department will be rebuilding once again and we’re conducting several [professor] searches now,” he said, adding that he still believes Harvard’s Af Am department is the best of its kind.

As with the departures of West, Appiah, Bobo, and Morgan, Harvard’s loss of Dawson is another institution’s gain.

“We have an extremely strong program in American politics, particularly recent politics. Professor Dawson’s addition will help make us a really extraodinarily strong group in that area of research,” said Dali Yang, chair of Chicago’s Political Science department.

—Staff writer William C. Marra can be reached at wmarra@fas.harvard.edu.