Students Rap Asian Studies Dept. In Meeting With Visiting Committee

The Overseers' Visiting Committee on East Asian Civilizations last night received sharp criticism from students in East Asian Studies concerning the relevance of their Department and the structure of the Visiting Committee.

"East Asian Studies at Harvard emphasize reformist rather than revolutionary approaches in Asia," said Richard P. Bernstein, a teaching fellow in East Asian Studies, "and they minimize the aggressive character of American economic and political intervention there."

"The oppressed classes require greater attention and representation at Harvard," Bernstein added. "This committee represents exclusively the advantaged groups of society."

Other students claimed that there was not a tenured professor in East Asian Studies who favored a radical critique of Asian civilization, and that teaching fellows in the department were recently refused permission to give a radical course on Chinese Communism.

Best Scholarship

Theodore H. White. a member of the Visiting Committee, said that the East Asian Studies Department has vastly improved in the past several years. "The best scholarship coming about this regime on the [Chinese] mainland is being done by Harvard scholars today," he said.

White asked Bernstein to name a "leftist" scholar which he would like to see tenured. Dernstein could, not think of one immediately, but asked if he could recommend one in a short time.

"I wish you would," said Osborn Elliott '45, chairman of the Visiting Committee.