Afro-American Studies

To The Editor of The Crimson:

"Our methodological approach toward understanding black history, literature, music and all aesthetics was the basis for rejecting white educational values, theories and standards." Manning Marable, editor of the Socialist Review and Professor at U. San Francisco, writing about Black Studies, concludes that white aesthetic and political hegemony has been successfully challenged in the face of a white counterassault. The failure Dean Henry Rosovsky refers to is the failure of Harvard to provide any environment for the growth ot this new independent approach.

Harvard's record with regard to Black Studies is a shabby history of hypocrisy and paternalism in hiring tenured faculty for the department. Between 1968 and 1971 on average one black professor was tenured each year, but in the cooled-off political climate following 1971 Harvard has felt obliged to tenure only one additional black professor (Eileen Southern). And out of this total of five, Afro has been given only one and a half. In the dastardly rejection of the eminently qualified and world-renowned African scholar E. Isaacs, who taught for six years (including half of all students taking Afro courses in 1971), the Harvard administration acted in racist and discriminatory fashion. But it also cut itself off from a pool of tenure track teaching fellows numbering more than a dozen who were hired by Dr. Isaacs.

While the Crimson reports that in 1971, the number of concentrators dropped by 76 per cent and course enrollment dropped 58 per cent (9/10/79), it does not report that Afro Am Studies faced a concerted assault from the black tenured professors at Harvard Martin Kilson and Orlando Patterson, who baited black students and the department with the slander of inferiority. This attack has been taken up by senior tutors, proctors in the Yard, freshman/women advisors out of ignorance and prejudice. On the basis of his past statements regarding Afro-Am Studies, I submit that Prof. Patterson disqualifies himself from the privilege of governing the department.

The Crimson inaccurately reports that the demand for an Afro Studies department came after the strike of '69. It became a strike demand because Rosovsky changed the report of his committee from recommending a department to recommending an interdisciplinary combined concentration without informing the students who worked on the committee writing the original version of the report. There was considerable pressure for a department leading up to that demand for some time. The challenge of an uncombined department is to present the perspective of two-thirds of the world's population, a perspective which other departments at Harvard have shown an inability to develop.

Last spring's boycott of classes organized by the Coalition for Awareness and Action was aimed at linking racism in the United States with racism in South Africa. The University administration pays lip service to antiracist and anti-apartheid ideals but does nothing to aid the self determination of black people anywhere. Their statements calling for case-by-case reviews of corporations investing in South Africa and the most recent decision regarding the governing of Afro-Am Studies are both roadblocks to the development of autonomy for black people. Antony M. Brutus '77/80

The Crimson responds:

The Crimson did not say, as Brutus notes, that "the demand for an Afro Studies department came after the strike of '69." The sentence in the article reads that the department was "created in the aftermath of the Harvard strike of 1969." The article notes that the Rosovsky committee had been working on developing Afro-American Studies considerably before the strike. The department itself was voted in after the strike in April 1969.