THE BLACK BRAIN TRUST

By JACK E. WHITE/CAMBRIDGE

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 after a long period of disarray. Says Gerald Early, director of the Afro-American studies program at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri: "Harvard's efforts give these scholars a prestige that redounds on African-American studies in general."

That is especially true now that Gates has snagged one of the country's most influential sociologists--the University of Chicago's William Julius Wilson, who will be a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and in Harvard's department of Afro-American studies. That means "Afro-Am," heretofore best known for Gates' esoteric literary theories and Cornel West's philosophical fulminations on race, will be a strong voice in public debates over poverty and racial tension. During Wilson's 24 years at Chicago, his research on how worldwide economic changes combined with the residual effects of discrimination to produce the black underclass has shaped the view of most experts in the field. Now, at 60, he believes he can combat what he considers a disastrous rightward swing in national urban policy better from Harvard than from Chicago, where, he says, "I was feeling a little isolated in the past several years here because of my interest in public policy."

The hoopla at Harvard over Wilson's well-publicized defection--and the corresponding gloom at Chicago--is a hallmark of how far black studies has come since its inception during the late 1960s. Back then, even die-hard proponents of the field concede, these programs were more a sop to the angry black students who had just begun to show up in large numbers on white campuses than a serious endeavor--the higher educational equivalent of building swimming pools in the inner city to take the heat out of long, hot summers. Poorly funded and often staffed by barely qualified teachers, they got little or no respect from other faculty members.

As a result, black studies fell into a long decline on many campuses, which was made worse by the buffoonery and outright nonsense of some of the field's best-known advocates. At City College, part of the City University of New York, for example, former black-studies chairman Leonard Jeffries became notorious for his blunderbuss attacks on Jews and his ludicrous theory classifying blacks as "sun people" and whites as "ice people." Other so-called Afrocentric scholars maintained that the ancient civilization of Egypt invented airplanes and electricity thousands of years ago. Small wonder black studies sometimes became a laughingstock.

Fortunately, that was not the only trend. At Columbia, for example, there has been an Afro-American studies program--on paper anyway--since 1969. But it was not until 1993, after several student protests, that the university hired respected radical historian Manning Marable to establish and direct the Institute for Research in African-American Studies, which now boasts 60 courses and 25 faculty members with affiliations in 10 other academic departments.

Philadelphia's Temple University, meanwhile, has become the standard-bearer for the responsible wing of the Afrocentric movement under the leadership of Molefi Kete Asante. His department includes the leading Egyptologist Theophile Obenga, as well as professors of African dance and linguistics. All 35 students who have received doctorates from Temple's program easily found jobs. Says Asante: "This is the hottest degree in the country." There are now 215 black-studies programs of varying quality at colleges and universities around the U.S.

The Renaissance in black studies during the 1990s has ignited a furious competition for scholars, with many of the best-known teachers jumping from campus to campus like free agents in professional sports. Gates, for example, leaped from Yale to Cornell University in 1985, to Duke in 1990, to Harvard in 1991, after then acting dean Henry Rosovsky promised to coach him about the combative academic climate that had beleaguered his predecessors for two decades. Says Gates: "He was able to teach me where all the bodies were buried because he's the one who buried them."

The team that Gates assembled is overwhelmingly on the left side of the spectrum because, he says, he has not yet been able to entice a black conservative or an Afrocentric with Harvard-worthy credentials. And though they disagree on many issues, they agree that black studies is not for blacks only, as some Afrocentrics maintain. Says Gates: "We stand as a rebuttal to the idea that Afro-American studies is primarily about building the self-esteem of other African Americans, or that only African Americans can understand, interpret and therefore teach black studies." When Gates took over as chairman, only one student was majoring in "Afro studies." Today the department's courses are among the most popular that Harvard offers, for both black and white students, and 40 students are majoring in the field.

But for all the glitter that surrounds his department, there are many doubts about the long-term significance of Gates' project. Some critics, like Temple's Asante, charge that under Gates and West, stardom has replaced substance. The two spend so much time speaking and writing for outside groups that their scholarly pursuits seem to take a backseat. Example: The Future of the Race, a forthcoming book in which Gates and West offer critiques of Du Bois's famous essay, "The Talented Tenth" (in which he argued that only by creating a small group of college-educated men could blacks achieve their racial destiny). Though Gates' eloquence and West's astonishing erudition are on display, the book has the feel of something they dashed off in their spare time.

But in the end, such criticisms are outweighed by the attention and respectability--and rigor--that Gates and his colleagues at Harvard and elsewhere are bringing to black studies. Says Michael Eric Dyson, director of the Institute of African-American Research at the University of North Carolina: "The strength of African-American studies programs is not simply for black students; it's a way for everyone to understand how American society works." In other words, black studies are not just for the talented tenth.

--Reported by Sharon E. Epperson/New York and James L. Graff/Chicago

With reporting by SHARON E. EPPERSON/NEW YORK AND JAMES L. GRAFF/CHICAGO