Bok and DuBois

BESIDES BEING an uncalled-for personal slight, President Bok's decision not to name Ewart Guinier '33, chairman of the Afro-American Studies Department, to the advisory board of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research is representative of an unreasonable and small-minded attitude toward dissent in the University. Because he balked at policies formulated by the administration, Guinier has been removed from a decision-making process that he should be an integral part of because of his role as Afro's only tenured professor.

The major point of contention between Guinier and the administration is the relationship between DuBois and the Afro Department. The administration's plan for the research facility calls for no formal connection between the two. Guinier's apparent sin is that he argued against the administration's position and voiced the discontent of many students and faculty who felt that the resources of DuBois should be available to a still-young Afro Department.

The arguments for a formal relationship between Afro and the DuBois Institute are persuasive, and the ongoing debate on the matter continues to be an important one. Bok's failure to appoint Guinier to the Committee that will oversee DuBois's development is an official attempt to stifle that debate and to make its resolution a foregone conclusion.

Explaining his decision not to appoint Guinier, Bok said last week that Guinier would have been a "logical" choice except that the Afro chairman's reluctance to go along with the administration's design for the institute made it "an imposition to ask him to serve." But it is clear that politeness was hardly the point of Bok's decision, and it is equally clear that if Bok had any respect for Guinier and the position he represents, Guinier would have been allowed to choose for himself whether he wanted to serve.

Bok's treatment of Guinier in this matter would seem to bear proof of Guinier's claim that the administration continues to treat the Afro Department as a "second-class citizen." It is inconceivable that Bok would fail to appoint any History Department members to the board of a new Harvard history institute, but that is exactly the approach he has taken to Afro in dealing with DuBois. If Bok could not find his way to appoint Guinier, there is no excuse for his decision to overlook all of the department's junior faculty while making up his list of advisory board members.

Because the final form of the DuBois Institute will have great consequences for Harvard's approach to Afro-American research, the issues involved in the current debate over DuBois are too important for Bok or anyone else to treat lightly. The administration's approach to appointing the Institute's advisory board is not only insulting to Guinier and the Afro Department, it is also insulting to anyone who takes the matter at all seriously.