Faculty Disagrees on Gomes Proposal

The Faculty clashed sharply yesterday over the proposed Foundation to improve race relations at Harvard, with several professors charging at a Faculty meeting that the Foundation would remove responsibility for improving race relations from institutions like the Houses.

Dean Rosovsky said after the meeting he will send back the proposal--which does not require Faculty approval--to the Faculty Council for its next meeting March 18 before he and President Bok "make a determination" on the Gomes Committee proposal.

Barbara G. Rosenkrantz, a council member and professor of the History of Science, sparked the conflict at yesterday's meeting, saying. "It is unthinkable that this Faculty would approve such a proposal without centering it in the Houses."

Subsequent speakers--including Nathan I. Huggins, chairman of the Afro-American Studies Department and director of the DuBois Institute for Afro-American Studies--argued that the University could best improve race relations by letting existing institutions deal with the problem and by approaching the issue on an ad hoe basis.

Saying he has "serious doubts" about the Foundation proposal calling for University funding and office space for the Foundation. Huggins told the Faculty, "Such a Foundation runs the risk of becoming an institution that functions only among well-meaning people, and becomes irrelevant to the end it intends to correct," and "would be perceived by some as a placation."

"I am persuaded, as a conservative of a kind, that institutions are the best ways to promote race relations," Huggins added.

David Layzer, Menzel Professor of Astrophysics, agreed, calling the Foundation "an additional bureaucracy" and adding. "Our task is not to provide a haven for students who do not find an environment congenial. It is to change that environment."

Citing conversations with minority students as having "shaped his ideas," Layzer argued that some may view the Foundation as an attempt to pacify students groups, adding its likely failure "would reinforce the cynical notion that Harvard doesn't care."

The division between the Foundation's proponents and its opponents--who believe that efforts to improve race relations should be promoted solely by the Houses--mirrors past debates in the Faculty Council and the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life (CHUL). Rosovsky said after the meeting. "We'll continue to seek the advice of our Faculty colleagues" informally, he added.

All speakers rejected the alternative of a Third World center--advocated by the student Third World Center Organization, which last spring presented the first proposal for an institution to serve minorities primarily and which recently withdrew support for the Foundation.

But James D. Wilkinson, associate professor of History and of History and Literature, lauded the Gomes plan, saying. "There is something to be said for the visibility of efforts to increase the integration" of minorities.

He criticized the argument advanced by his colleagues that the Houses should serve as the center for promotion race relations, noting. "The Houses are themselves exclusive" and added. "A little help from a central organization can go a long way. I don't think I share Professor Layzer's fear of bureaucracy."

The Rev. Peter J. Gomes, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and chairman of the committee that recommended the Foundation, introduced the plan to the Faculty, praising it as helping "to capitalize on the few gains we've been able to make in the last decade."

Creating the Foundation would improve race relations more than "endorsing the status quo, of continuing to respond to every crisis or perception of crisis." Gomes said, adding the plan is also more effective than "yielding to the pressures" to create "subsidized spheres of influence" like a Third World center.

As the meeting drew to a close, Dean Fox said he was "a little uncomfortable about the dichotomy" among the professors who spoke, explaining that he saw no reason why the Houses and the Foundation could not both work to better race relations.

"The issues have been seriously addressed in the Houses for some time now with great care," he added, citing Adams House's sponsorship of discussions on race relations.

William H. Bossert '59, master of Lowell House and McKay Professor of Applied Mathematics, said after the meeting that he agrees there is no "dichotomy" between the Houses and the proposed Foundation. But he said of Fox's statement. "I think John is incorrect in saying we have all been working," adding that all Houses should follow Adams House's example in promoting race-related forums