'Cambridge Project' Foes In Afro Ask for Hearing

Afro yesterday asked the Faculty subcommittee studying the Cambridge Project to invite Afro representatives to speak against the Project at a closed subcommittee hearing.

But two other student groups opposed to the Project-SDS and the November Action Committee (NAC)-have rejected the subcommittee's invitation to all groups interested in the Project to send up to three spokesmen to a closed hearing sometime next month.

Victor M. Bond '72 of Afro yesterday gave a copy of the anti-Project policy statement approved by Afro earlier this month to Harvey Brooks, dean of Engineering and Applied Physics and chairman of the Faculty subcommittee. Bond also told Brooks that Afro would like to send representatives to a subcommittee meeting in order to present Afro's anti-Project petition and to explain the group's opposition to the Project.

The subcommittee will decide at a meeting tonight whom it wishes to invite to its closed hearings. Brooks said yesterday that it is "almost certi?n" that spokesmen from Afro will be invited.

Mail From SDS

Brooks also received yesterday a letter from SDS which accused his Subcommittee of "holding closed hearings precisely to prevent people from seeing the vicious purposes to which the Project will be put." The letter called the subcommittee "an academic rubber stamp for the Corporation" and ended with a "demand that [its] meetings be open and announced beforehand."

The NAC has ignored the subcommittee totally. "Our position on the Cambridge Project is clear."member Barry A Margolin '70 said yesterday. "If we affect the University's decision, it will be because of our power, not because we can persuade it to anti-imperialist polities."

Discounts SFAC Vote

The Student-Faculty Adivsory Council (SFAC) voted last Thursday to recommend to the Faculty that Harvard not join the Project governing board. But Brooks said yesterday, "My impression is that not many people knew very much about what they were voting on. They didn't have much of a chance to look at the Cambridge Project ahead of time."

Frank D. Raines '71, chairman of SFAC took issue with Brooks's statement. "We knew what the Project was about," he said last night. "And it appeared that the people who voted against it were the ones who knew the most about it."

The $7.9 million, five-year Cambridge Project. funded by the Defense Department, uses M. I. T. computers to correlate social 'science data. Harvard has been invited to join M. I. T. on the governing board of the Project, which has been attacked by radicals as serving what they call American imperialism.

Afro Petition

Afro and SDS are presently circulating around Harvard an Afro petition which claims that the Cambridge Project will be used for "controlling the lives, minds, and destines of [oppressed people here and abroad] in the economic interests of the U. S." The NAC led a demonstration against the Project late last month, in which about 175 people marched peacefully into Dean Ford's office in University Hall.

The Brooks subcommittee has been discussing the Project in twice-weekly sessions since October 3. It will make a recommendation on the Project sometime in November to the Faculty Committee on Research Policy, which will then advise the Faculty on what policy to recommend to the Corporation.

Brooks Replies

Answering SDS's charge that the subcommittee is a "rubber stamp." Brooks said yesterday. "I wish to hell they were right; it would make our job much easier. "He added." I don't see what purpose open meetings would serve. If SDS wants publicity, that's their privilege. We're not interested in publicity but in finding out the facts."

The subcommittee received about 17 letters from students and Faculty in response to its invitation to "all members of the Harvard community to submit letters presenting their opinions on the Project." The letters were "about equally divided" for and against the Project, Brooks said. A few students asked to present their views at a closed subcimmittee hearing. he added.

Work has Begun

Brooks said that his subcommittee has begun writing the "value-free" parts of the report it will make to the Research Policy Committee. These parts, he said, include the history and background of the Cambridge Project and the University's alternatives concerning it.

At the School of Education, a studentfaculty committee investigating the Project me Monday for he first time. The committee, chaired by Noel F. McGinn, lecturer on Education, will report to Theodore R. Sizer, dean of the Ed School, after meeting weekly through November.