Afro Study Hearings to End With Meetings This Weekend

The Afro-American Studies Review Committee will conclude its hearings on the administration and structure of the Department with two meetings this weekend.

This weekend's meeting will be the review Committee's fifth session since it was formed last October. The Review Committee plans to make its report sometime in May, Walter J. Leonard, special assistant to the President and member ex-officio of the Committee, said Wednesday.

Leonard said the Review Committee has invited representatives of al the black student organizations in the various faculties of the University to meet with the Committee. In addition, he said, the Committee has asked Orlando Patterson, professor of Sociology and a representative of the Phillips Brooks House Association, to attend one of this weekend's meetings.

Patterson said yesterday that he plans to elaborate on a memorandum which he sent to the Committee in December.

He said that he favored making Afro-American Studies a joint concentration with another department. "A student should get a grounding in a discipline like economics or political science before beginning work in Afro-American Studies," Patterson said.

Patterson said he also favors joint appointments for Faculty members who come to Harvard to teach Afro-American Studies.

"We will never get anyone good unless we have joint appointments. Quite distinguished scholars, white and black, conservative and radical, won't take a job in Afro-American Studies simply because they don't know when student interest in the program will wane and the various departments across the country will fold up." Paterson said.

Patterson refused to comment on the role played by Ewart Guinier '33, chairman of the Afro-American Studies Department, in the administration of the program. "The less said about Ewart Guinier the better," he said.