THE BLACK BRAIN TRUST

A HARVARD HIRE SIGNALS A NEW VITALITY IN BLACK STUDIES--THE LONGTIME STEPCHILD OF ACADEMIA

TO ITS LEGION OF ADMIRERS, THE Afro-American studies department that Henry Louis Gates Jr. is assembling at Harvard is the most glittering display of black brainpower since W.E.B. Du Bois studied alone at the university a century ago. To its detractors in the black-studies movement, it is simply a collection of high-profile academic hustlers driven more by a lust for fame and big lecture fees than by any deep commitment to the field. Either way, the house that Gates is building in Cambridge has emerged as the most visible sign that black studies has been reborn as a vibrant academic discipline...

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