Word: isaac
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Ephraim Isaac, associate professor of Afro-American studies, is on sabbatical during this academic year, completing a major work, "An Introduction to Classical Ethiopic Literature", through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities...
Meanwhile, the nomination of Ephraim Isaac had been yellowing with age. First proposed in 1971, his nomination passed through all the committees before being acted upon in 1975. Rejected by a committee of scholars alien to his field of expertise, Isaac had been deceived into believing that tenure was a possibility. The assorted rationale offered as an excuse for his rejection underlined the fallacy in his thinking. The committee which judged him said they were not supposed to be considering appointments solely within the Afro department; Rosovsky said that the decision was not necessarily a judgment of scholarship...
...issue that has had implications for both the department's scope as well as its political perspective has been the removal of several Africanists and Pan-Africanists, chiefly Ephraim Isaac and Pierre-Michel Fontaine. Isaac's case has been described; Fontaine's contract was due to be renewed when Dr. Southern became head of the department. She denied her support to either, despite the fact that they were both eminently qualified, and that they together taught most of the students enrolled in the department. She gave no explanation for her actions, even when pressed for one. The result is that...
Because of Dr. Southern's silence on this issue, one can only speculate as to what her reasons were for turning her back on Isaac, and firing Fontaine. Perhaps they were too "radical" for her; perhaps she was merely trying to avoid controversy by allowing the University to dispose of faculty members it did not want. In either case, their opposition to her policies would have been a burden to her sooner or later, and for Southern, it is not tension which develops a department, but rather, the sober acquiescence of the faculty and students to the policies...
...discipline not only explores the realities of oppression and liberation, inherently political realities, but also owes its very existence on campuses to political struggle. Prior to 1969, Harvard felt no compulsion to seriously explore the Black experience; where was objectivity then? The University's denial of tenure to Isaac, its emphasis on joint appointments to Afro, and its vigorous criticism of the department all reek of the battle of political perspectives. To divorce Afro studies from politics is the height of absurdity, yet this is what is presently happening at Harvard under Southern's supervision...