The Report: Attack and Defense

Four months after President Bok's Advisory Committee on the W.E.B. DuBois Institute submitted its report, the long-expected controversy over the committee's proposals finally surfaced this week with two separate blasts at the report's contents.

Ewart Guinier '33, chairman of the Afro-American Studies Department, charged that the committee failed to live up to obligations imposed upon it by a Faculty-approved prospectus for the research institute by not stipulating any formal connection between the DuBois Institute and the Afro Department.

What may prove to be more significant opposition came from a group of Afro Department concentrators, who met Monday to organize a petition drive aimed at delaying implementation of the DuBois report's proposals. The dissident undergraduates, who will meet again next Monday, have developed a 12-point program for the Institute that they want integrated into the committee's recommendations.

Walter J. Leonard, special assistant to Bok and chairman of the advisory committee, spent a good part of his week trying to stem the tide of opposition to his committee's work. He responded to Guinier's charge by saying that the 1969 prospectus on which the Afro chairman is staking his claim has been superseded by 1973 Faculty legislation mandating that the DuBois Institute be established on a University-wide basis.

Leonard also tried to diffuse the petition drive's strength by arguing that his committee's vaguely-worded report does not rule out most of the petitioners' recommendations, and that if the institute's first director chooses to incorporate these recommendations he will be free to do so. Leonard said, in addition, that it would be a mistake to tie the institute director's hands by limiting his discretion.

Despite Leonard's contention that Bok has probably already accepted his report and that its implementation will not be delayed, it is clear that the undergraduate petitioners will not give up without a fight that could prove embarrassing to Bok and Leonard. Wesley E. Profit '69, a teaching fellow in the Afro Department and an organizer of the petition drive, said Tuesday: "The president and his representatives often say things they later change their minds on."

The DuBois report called upon Bok to initiate a $5-to$6-million capital fund drive for the institute. Leonard said it's already underway.