Harvard Professor Ends Talk of a Princeton Coup

Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. put an end to a widely watched academic tug-of-war Wednesday, announcing he would remain as head of Harvard University’s black studies department rather than follow two prominent colleagues to Princeton.

“This is for good,” Gates said. “It’s to rest. It’s final.”

Professors Cornel West and K. Anthony Appiah were lured away by Princeton earlier this year. West left after a dispute with new Harvard President Lawrence Summers.

Gates, who is chair of Harvard’s Afro-American studies program and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research, said that he had talked extensively with Summers since West left.

“We’ve been talking heart-to-heart,” Gates said. “I’m absolutely persuaded that he sees Afro-American studies as fundamental to the intellectual life of a great university.”

Gates’ plans had been the subject of widespread speculation among observers who wondered whether Princeton would lure Harvard’s entire black studies “dream team.”

“It was very tempting to join Anthony Appiah and Cornel West,” Gates said. “They’re my two best friends in the academy, and they’re two great scholars, and Princeton now has virtually overnight become one of the three great centers of African American studies.”

But, he said, the Harvard department was in transition.

“It would be irresponsible of me to leave at this time,” he said.