Daly Asked to Review Nieman Fellows' Gripes

Charles U. Daly, vice president for Government and Community Affairs, will chair a five-member faculty committee to evaluate the Nieman Fellowship Program in light of disagreements between the journalism Fellows and Dwight Sargent, curator of the Nieman fellowships.

"In my year in the Program, the Curator's office just could not attune itself to the interests of the Fellows." Carl Cobb. Boston Globe medical reporter and one of a dozen American newspapermen picked to study here in 1969-1970 on the Nieman Fund said yesterday. "The irrevelance to us of scheduled speakers led us to invite our own and hold underground seminars" Cobb said.

Daly will look into Cobb's complaints echoed in letters a number of recent Nieman Fellows have sent to the University. The chief gripe is that Sargent invites too many publishers, circulation directors and obscure academicians as weekly speakers, and not enough active writers.

Cobb also said Sargent "shepherded funds inequitably." "Somehow the Dwight Sargent-sponsored events always seemed to occur in the top of the Holyoke Center or at an expensive club. If the Fellows brought up a speaker we had to settle for beer and cheese at the Faculty Club. And we often had to foot the hotel and airline bills for our guests from our own pockets," Cobb said.

Cobb praised the freedom that the Fellowship gave him to study any course under any faculty, department, or professor that he chose. He said he profited from several regular University seminars on medicine and law.

Cobb said he sensed "fence-mending and politicking--not current interest" motivates Sargent's selection of certain Harvard faculty members to speak.

Cobb found Sargent uncooperative with the Fellows in petty secretarial details. "He wouldn't even let us use his stationery." Cobb said.

Daly said his committee--which will report their findings to president Bok--will approach the controversy in the Nieman Program with open minds, "I've heard plenty of reports about problems they're having down there--but we're not going to jump on anybody before we've spent a lot of time studying facts," Daly said last week.