OEO to Maintain Grants To Law Research Center

A Harvard research center threatened by government cutbacks was informed last week that it will continue to receive monthly grants from the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO).

The Federal grants will enable the Center of Law and Education to remain open. Harvard, which supplies the remaining 20 per cent of the Center's budget, has told the Center that without government aid it would be impossible to continue operations.

Since the Center's government grant expired on January 31, the OEO has been supporting the Center with month-to-month grants of about $32,000.

The Center will operate on the monthly funds until Congress acts on a forthcoming Law Service Commission Bill proposed by the Nixon Administration.

J. Herald Flannery, deputy director of the Center, said that he was pessimistic about the future of the Center and other law reform offices. "It's a common understanding that the administration would like to abolish the law reform centers," he said. "And I expect the administration's bill won't include a law reform component."

In a move that may bolster Flannery's doubts, The Crimson learned yesterday that an outside research agency, originally hired by the OEO to evaluate various neighborhood programs, began last week to evaluate law reform centers exclusively.

When asked whether or not this investigation was unusual, Roger Detweiler, Chief of the Support Branch Operations Division of OEO's Legal Services, said that "It is normal to evaluate programs, but what is unusal is that all the law reform agencies are being evaluated at once."

He noted, however, that of the 13 national law reform offices, the Harvard Center is one of the three agencies that were evaluated last December, and would not be reinvestigated.

Detweiler said the evaluations of the three law reform centers were generally favorable last year, but added that the considerations then were different than they are now. "Last year the purpose of law reform wasn't questioned. But now it is, and that has to effect the evaluating process."

Law reform centers concentrate on research and act as back-up agencies for the legal aid officers, which directly serve poor clients. These smaller agencies are still being regularly funded by the OEO with year-long grants.

Seminars

The Harvard Center has specialized in the legal problems of education, such as students' rights and bilingual instruction. It has offered seminars dealing with the problems of law and education each semester since it was established in 1969.

The future of the Center was first