In 1980 Bell became the first African American to ever head a non-black law school. He resigned several years later over a dispute about faculty diversity. Bell then taught at Stanford University for a year and returned to Harvard in 1986, where he staged a five-day sit-in in his office to protest the school's failure to grant tenure to two legal scholars on staff, that claimed legal institutions play a role in the maintenance of the ruling class' position. Bell's sit-in galvanized student support but sharply divided the faculty. Hiring practices at Harvard surfaced again in 1990, when he vowed to take an unpaid leave of absence until the school appointed a female of color to its tenured faculty. At the time, of the law school's 60 tenured professors, only three were black and five were women. The school had never had a black woman on the tenured staff.To some observers, Bell's lament about Harvard amounted to a call for the school to lower its academic qualifications in the quest to mold a diversified faculty on the campus. But Bell argued that academically able faculty were being ignored and that critics of diversity invariably underplay the value of a faculty that is broadly reflective of society, and, more importantly, that the credentials demanded by institutions like Harvard perpetuate the domination of white, well-off, middle-aged men. He also argued that the system was self perpetuating. As he commented in the Boston Globe, "Let's look at a few qualifications--say civil rights experience ... that might allow [a chance at a tenured teaching position for] more folks here who, like me, maybe didn't go to the best law school but instead have made a real difference in the world."
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