Tenure Ephraim Isaacs

To the Editor of The Crimson:

Your article in the May 5 Crimson about L.D. Reddick deserves "congratulations." In past years The Crimson simply ignored the Afro-American Studies Department's many outstanding accomplishments or enveloped them in controversy as is still fashionable.

The anonymous observers of the department who, you say, hope that "one day...there would be a Reddick permanent tenured-professorship" are uninformed on several counts:

First, in December 1970, at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in Boston, I lunched with Dr. Reddick and advised him of the department's eagerness to have him join us as a tenured professor. He indicated interest on condition that the University was serious about the Du Bois Institute. I suggested he write to the appropriate officer of the administration which he did. He never received even an acknowledgement much less information which he requested about the status of and plans for making the Institute a worthwhile endeavor to enhance Afro-American Studies at Harvard.

Second, Dr. Reddick is now 66 years old and hardly a candidate for tenure.

Finally, we currently have in the Afro-American Studies Department an outstanding scholar who has been duly nominated by the department, supported by dozens of internationally acclaimed scholars in and out of his field here at Harvard and throughout the world; yet the dean and the president stubbornly refuse to forward his appointment to the governing boards for ratification. I am, of course, referring to that great scholar and beloved teacher of the African heritage of Afro-Americans-- Associate Professor Ephraim Isaac. Ewart Guinier   Professor of Afro-American Studies