Two of Stanford’s most highly-regarded African American professors could be leaving the Farm for Harvard next year, Stanford’s Dean of Humanities and Sciences Richard Saller confirmed yesterday.

According to an article published last Friday in The Harvard Crimson, Harvard will offer a tenured position to Stanford’s Marcyliena Morgan, an associate professor of communication who also directs the Hip Hop Archive.

If she chooses to leave Stanford, Morgan will likely be accompanied by husband Lawrence Bobo, who is the director of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE).

Saller called media coverage of the issue “premature.”

“To my knowledge Professor Morgan doesn’t actually have a letter with the details,” he said. “She knows that the approval was given but we don’t even know what Harvard was offering exactly. The discussions haven’t really had a chance to develop yet.”

He also said the University will work hard to keep Morgan and Bobo.

“Both of them play a really vital role in the intellectual community here,” he said. “They are leaders and we will be extremely aggressive in convincing them to stay.”

Morgan is well-known in academic circles for the Hip Hop Archive, which Saller acknowledged was an important academic resource at Stanford.

“[The archive] is part of the larger effort to diversify our cultural span here,” he said. “We are eager to make sure that she is able to develop it here.”

Communications Department Chair James Fishkin said that he and his colleagues thought highly of Morgan.

“These things are always complicated,” he said. “She’s a great asset to the department. We’d like to keep her, and we’ll do our best.”

Fishkin added that there are a number of levels to the process of countering an offer from another university.

“Once she gets a letter, we will be talking about it,” he said. “We’ll have time to see how well Stanford can respond.”

As of last night, Bobo had not yet informed CCSRE staff of the offer. Fishkin also said that he had not yet heard of it from Morgan.

Communications Asst. Prof. Fred Turner, who works with Morgan, praised his colleague as a trailblazing researcher.

“In the department she plays a really important role in studying hip hop and popular culture,” he said. “She is an exceptionally able theorist of race and media.”

Bobo is well known for his recent work on racial inequities in the criminal justice system.

Harvard Prof. J. Lorand Matory told The Crimson last week that he was “overjoyed” to hear of the offer. He called Bobo “probably the leading statistician of race relations.”

“We couldn’t be Harvard without him,” Matory told The Crimson.

Bobo said he was unavailable for comment when he was approached by The Daily yesterday. Morgan did not return phone calls made to her office.

Saller emphasized that Stanford highly values both professors’ contributions to the University.

“We very much want to make sure,” he said, “that they understand how important they are to the institution.”