McCloy Scholarship

Volkswagen officials in Germany, the donors of a controversial $2 million grant to the Kennedy School of Government, this week indicated their intention to stand by their decision to name the grant after a former federal official, a program administrator said yesterday.

The statement came in response to a series of protest letters sent last week to K-School Dean Graham T. Allison '62 by several Jewish and Asian American student groups.

Charging that the program's namesake, former Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy, supported the decision to intern Japanese Americans during World War II, opposed the bombing of the German concentration camp at Auschwitz, and commuted the death sentences of convicted Nazi war criminals, the letters urge the K-School to change the name of the program.

The grant, which the K-School announced last month, will bring 10 German students to the school each year.

Returning this week from a visit to Germany, where he interviewed applicants for the McCloy Scholarship, James A. Cooney '69, assistant director of the program, said he and the program's director, Guido Goldman, informed Volkswagen officials of the students' objections at a dinner welcoming the K-School delegation.

But Cooney quoted Goldman as saying that the K-School "still falt very honored to accept a grant in [McCloy's] name."

He added that Volkswagen Secretary General Rolf Moller indicated that the company was "Firm about the name."

Cooney indicated that a meeting with Allison to discuss the issue, called for in the students' letters, will take place when Goldman returns from Europe on May 9.

Student support for changing the scholarship's name continues to mount. The Law School's Third World Coalition yesterday signed the seventh protest letter, to be delivered to the K-School later this week. The coalition consists of representatives from Black, Hispanic, Arab, Asian, American Indian and Puerto Rican law student organizations.

Last Sunday, the Undergraduates Council voted to join the protests.