Bok Calls for Scholarships To Aid Black South Africans

President Bok proposed coordinated, intercollegiate scholarship program for black South Africans to a meeting of seven college presidents at Harvard late last month, Lawrence F. Stevens '65, secretary of the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility, said yesterday.

Stevens said that while the seven college administrators supported Bok's proposal, they did not decide on a specific program and will not meet again for two or three months.

Bok refused to comment on the meeting or the nature of his proposed programs, saying it is a personal project still in "a formative stage."

Trying to Help

Bok said, however, that he believes a scholarship program "might be helpful, since a number of South Africans and other people" said such a program is needed.

William Carmichael, head of the Ford Foundation Office for the Middle East and Africa, said yesterday, however, that the Ford Foundation and the Institute for International Education (IIE), two groups represented at the meeting, discussed a scholarship program with Bishop Desmond Tutu, secretary-general of the South African Council of Churches.

Tutu received an honorary degree from Harvard in June 1979.

Carmichael said Tutu is organizing a committee to take note of "the needs of black South Africans" and to help develop a scholarship program, He added, however, that "there is nothing as of now."

Under the proposed program, Carmichael said, black South Africans would be offered scholarships from American universities and financial assistance for travel and other costs from corporations and foundations.

President Bok and other institutions are creating the scholarship program, Carmichael said, because black South Africans "are a very large and disadvantaged group that will one day be in control of their country." Very few black South Africans are sufficiently educated to assume effective leadership, he added.

The Ford Foundation could not launch a scholarship program with its own financial resources and administrative ties, Carmichael said, adding that a program can only be established through the cooperation of colleges, corporations, institutes and foundations.

Get It Together

Hilda Mortimer, consultant in the South African education program for IIE, said yesterday it is important that American colleges have a well-coordinated program, so each is not functioning through separate channels.

David Wood, director of international programs of the Carnegie Foundation, who also met with Bok, said those present at the meeting also discussed the condition of black education in South Africa.

Stevens said there are a few individuals and committees in South Africa that could help to locate students and to develop the program.

The foundations, Stevens said, are familiar with groups and committees in South Africa and can help identify those that would be most effective in finding students for the scholarship program.

He added that the program is being pursued because the future of South Africa is a very controversial issue both at Harvard and around the country, "with clear educational questions involved."

The South African government has given no response to the proposed program, Stevens said.

The presidents of Brandeis University, Bowdoin College, Morgan State College, Oberlin College, Colby College, Smith College and Hampshire College attended the meeting, as well as representatives of the African-American Institute.

Mortimer said five black students from Namibia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa are enrolled in American universities under a program sponsored by IIE and partially funded by the Agency for International Development.