Dean Watson's Letter

The following is the text of Dean Watson's letter to the president of the AAAAS, in which he explains the Faculty Committee on Student Activities' refusal to recognize the association.

Dear Mr. Anochie:

The Faculty Committee on Student Activities has given careful thought to your letter of October 31. In it you requested formal University recognition of the Association of African and Afro-American Students; you report that the Association members are unwilling to withdraw or to change the membership clause of the proposed constitution, which has been in question; and you argue that at this point in history it is essential to form an African and American Negro student association, with membership determined by a "dogma of anti-racist racism." You feel a duty to require the University to take a stand on this important issue, and finally you "insist that we have the right to be aided toward our worthy goals by our University."

As we have told you in earlier correspondence and in meetings, we are favorably impressed by the stated purposes of your Association, and we would welcome the development at Harvard of a student organization which would represent well the interests, and concerns, and the urgent social and economic problems of the African nations and of American Negroes. We would understand that such an organization, to be representative and effective, would have to be predominantly of African and American Negro membership. Further, if your constitution allowed for the possibility of eventual election to membership of students of other races, we would not intervene or be coercive if, in practice, the members elected at present only Africans and American Negroes to membership. The College does not try to tell any student organization whom, in practice, it shall elect to membership. We have been over all this ground with you and your associates.

Where a difference of opinion has come between us is in a complicated double question: a) Whether your organization intends by the phrasing of your constitution to limit your membership to Africans and American Negroes, and thus as a matter of principle to exclude students of other races from membership: and, b) If you plan to exclude students of other races from membership as a matter of constitutional principle, whether Harvard College can sponsor and put its name to your group.

I do not wish to rehearse here all the difficulty our Committee has had, going back to last May, to get a clear answer to the first basic question, whether your Association intends, as a matter of principle, to restrict your membership by considerations of race. As you note in your new letter, your group has "tended to avoid answering the questions whether we shall have restricted membership or not." As recently as October 21, the Faculty Committee was given quite specific written assurances from you and your associat, on the one hand that you had no intention to be exclusive on racial lines, and on the other hand that you did indeed plan to be exclusive on racial lines, and that the College should welcome the idea. As we told you on October 21, the question of principle is important to us, and not frivolous, and we were unwilling to try to reach a decision on the basis of so ambiguous an answer.

We take your new letter to be the Association's considered response to our request for clarification. And, although there are still traces of ambiguity in details of your phrasing, the main thrust of the Association's purpose seems to us now to be made quite clear. The stated purpose is to have a student organization which will be exclusively African and American Negro. Your letter calls the policy by the name, "anti-racist racism." It goes on to justify the purpose at length in terms of acute present-day social needs. And you call upon Harvard to recognize that the special needs of the time require the College to abandon, for your special case, our long-standing rule that membership in student organizations, as in the College itself, should not be governed in principle by stipulations of race, religion, or national origin.

We have given careful thought to the deeply-felt arguments in your letter, but have reached the conclusion that we cannot grant formal recognition to your Association, or any other student organization, which would restrict its membership as a matter of principle by stipulations of race, religion, or national origin. Formal, deliberate exclusions of this sort would violate the most deeply held principles of the College. You have noted that even though a student organization has an open membership clause in its constitution, it may nonetheless in its elections practice discrimination and exclusions of a sort we profess to abhor.

You are indignant about this and call it hypocrisy; and you have told us that it is your open and announced intention to base your membership upon race, and that you will not stoop to hypocrisy to achieve your goal. That is a clear and honorable position which does you credit. We will try to make our position clear, also. We do not intend to coerce, and indeed we could not coerce, student organizations in the election of members. On the other hand we do insist upon keeping before all organizations in explicit form the principles of open membership which the College itself observes, and supports, and would like to see prevail.

The Committee sincerely regrets that we have come to an impasse on this, to us, most serious issue. We have felt all along, and still feel, that your proposed organization could serve good and important purposes. But we are unwilling, at this critical time in history, to put the weight of Harvard's approval behind the principle of racial separatism and exclusion. Very truly yours,   Robert B. Watson   For the Committee

We take your new letter to be the Association's considered response to our request for clarification. And, although there are still traces of ambiguity in details of your phrasing, the main thrust of the Association's purpose seems to us now to be made quite clear. The stated purpose is to have a student organization which will be exclusively African and American Negro. Your letter calls the policy by the name, "anti-racist racism." It goes on to justify the purpose at length in terms of acute present-day social needs. And you call upon Harvard to recognize that the special needs of the time require the College to abandon, for your special case, our long-standing rule that membership in student organizations, as in the College itself, should not be governed in principle by stipulations of race, religion, or national origin.

We have given careful thought to the deeply-felt arguments in your letter, but have reached the conclusion that we cannot grant formal recognition to your Association, or any other student organization, which would restrict its membership as a matter of principle by stipulations of race, religion, or national origin. Formal, deliberate exclusions of this sort would violate the most deeply held principles of the College. You have noted that even though a student organization has an open membership clause in its constitution, it may nonetheless in its elections practice discrimination and exclusions of a sort we profess to abhor.

You are indignant about this and call it hypocrisy; and you have told us that it is your open and announced intention to base your membership upon race, and that you will not stoop to hypocrisy to achieve your goal. That is a clear and honorable position which does you credit. We will try to make our position clear, also. We do not intend to coerce, and indeed we could not coerce, student organizations in the election of members. On the other hand we do insist upon keeping before all organizations in explicit form the principles of open membership which the College itself observes, and supports, and would like to see prevail.

The Committee sincerely regrets that we have come to an impasse on this, to us, most serious issue. We have felt all along, and still feel, that your proposed organization could serve good and important purposes. But we are unwilling, at this critical time in history, to put the weight of Harvard's approval behind the principle of racial separatism and exclusion. Very truly yours,   Robert B. Watson   For the Committee