Faculty to Vote on A.B. In Asian Studies Today

The Faculty, at its first meeting since February, will consider a motion today calling for the establishment of a Faculty Council on East Asian Studies which would supervise a new A.B. program in that field and coordinate East Asian studies at Harvard.

The motion, to be introduced by John K. Fairbank '29, Higginson Professor of History, provides for an A.B. Degree in East Asian Studies beginning in the academic year 1972-73. It is the first of several proposals dealing with undergraduate education which will come before the Faculty this Spring.

White the exact degree requirements for the concentration will be worked out by a Standing Committee appointed by Dean Dunlop. Fairbank's proposal stipulates a minimum language requirement of two years in a Far Eastern language.

The creation of the new A.B. does not entail the establishment of any new departments, nor any shift nor increase in Faculty. The employment of a Standing Committee to administer the degree program mirrors the procedure currently being used in Social Studies. History and Literature, Folklore and Mythology, Applied Mathematics, and History of Science.

Fairbank's proposal grows out of a 38-page report submitted to Dean Dunlop on March 1 by a Task Force on East Asian Studies. Fairbank said yesterday that the report--which will be released later this month--notes Harvard's preeminence in the Western world in East Asian Studies, but adds that Harvard's capacity to give undergraduates a "meaningful view of East Asia is much larger than we are currently offering."

During the past decade, undergraduate enrollment in courses in East Asian Studies--which embrace offerings in social science, history and humanities--has increased dramatically, reaching a level of more than double that in 1961. About 1200 undergraduates enrolled in these courses last year.

While the size of graduate enrollment has also rises--there are currently about 250 graduate students as opposed to 60 undergraduate concentrators in East Asia in the History and Far Eastern Language Departments--Fairbank said yesterday that the number will decrease in line with general rollbacks in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Fairbank said that although the new degree comes out of a three-year program, any undergraduate who is able to meet the as yet unestablished concentration requirements can receive an A.B. in East Asian Studies in June 1973.

The East Asia Task Force, which Dunlop appointed six months ago with Fairbank as chairman, included Edwin O. Reischauer. University Professor; Patrick D. Hanan, professor of Chinese Literature; Howard S. Hibbett '44, professor of Japanese Literature; Dwight H. Perkins, professor of Modern Chinese Studies; Henry Rosovsky, professor of Economics; Ezra F. Vogel, professor of Sociology; and, Edward W. Wagner '45, professor of Korean Studies.

The formation of a Faculty Council on East Asian Studies is designed to coordinate not only the Standing Committee for the new A.B. program, but also the expanding range of East Asian Studies at Harvard.

According to Fairbank's proposal, this range includes Standing Committees which administer A.M. degrees in Regional Studies--East Asia and Ph.D.s in History and East Asian Languages; the committee administering federal funds for the Center for East Asian Studies and the National Defense Foreign Language Fellowship program; the East Asian Research Center; and the Managing Committee of the Harvard-Yenching Library.

The East Asia A.B. program will be subject to a routine review by the Faculty Council at the end of three years. A report of that review must be presented to the Faculty in not less than five years