Afro-American Department Offers Seventeen Courses

The Afro-American Studies Department created last April by a vote of the Faculty will offer seven courses this Fall and ten during the Spring according to a report released yesterday by the department's Standing Committee.

Ewart Guinier, a visiting professor, is the department's first chairman. He will teach Afro-American Studies 20, which explores the current role of the black community in organized labor and polities, and will coordinate AAS 95, a colloquium required of all concentrators.

Guinier has worked with the Urban Center at Columbia University as Coordinator of Community Programs and has served on the Advisory Board of Black Heritage. He studied as an undergraduate at Harvard and City College of New York, and holds a J. D. degree from New York University.

Responsibility

According to the Standing Committee. Guinier has been recommended for a full professorship with tenure and "is expected to assume a major responsibility for planning the department's future development."

Concentration in the department is open to sophomores, beginning with theclass of 1972, and is limited to 50 for that year. About 70 sophomores have already signed up for concentration.

In addition to Guinier, the Afro-American Studies Department includes six visiting lecturer, a two-year lecturer, and assistant professor Azinna Nwafor, who will serve as senior tutor.

Harvard Grad

Nwafor graduated from Harvard and received a Ph. D. in political science from the University of Michigan. He will be teaching AAS 13, a full course dealing with the significance and consequences of "the emergence of Africa as an independent actor in International Polities. "

Three new courses-a survey of African history(AAS 10), the history of slavery(AAS 11), and an introduction to Ethiopian history and religion(AAS 12)-will be taught by Ephraim Isaac, lecturer here for two years and former director of the National Literacy Campaign in Ethiopia.

Other new courses include:

AAS 14: Caribbean Social Structure, taught by Orlando Patterson, currently a lecturer at the University of the West Indies with a Ph. D. in sociology from the London School of Economics.

AAS 21: Boston's Black Community, a course involving field work and taught by Fred Clifton a visiting lecturer now serving as Education Coordinator for Baltimore's Model Cities Agency.

Critique

AAS 22: Philosophy and Critique of the Black Movement, given by Havward Henry, National Chairman of the Black Unitarian Universalist Caucus who currently holds a visiting appointment at M. I. T.

AAS 23: Post-Conviction Rights and Remedies, a conference course including field studies and taught by Harold R. Washington, an attorney currently participating in the Clinical-Legal Education Program at Harvard Law School.

AAS 30: African and West Indian Literature given by Richard A Long, a professor at Atlanta University Long will teach AAS 33: Afro-American Letters and Thought during the Spring term.

AAS 31: History of African Art, taught by J. Newton Hill, a professor at New York University, who will offer a black poetry course in the Spring AAS 32.

New Institute

The Standing Committee-including seven Faculty members and six students-has also recommended that Harvard establish a research institute to be named the W. E. B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research. The institute would be "designed as a center for the growth and development of the study, of race relations and of black America in a historical and contemporary, political and social, economic and cultural setting."

According to the Committee's report, tire Institute, "similar in scope to the Center for International Affairs or the Kennedy Institute of Politics, will bring visitors who are identified with Afro-American affairs to Harvard and will provide extra-curricular seminars and summer research grants in Afro-American affairs to students at the University."

The committee also suggests that the Institute finance Faculty research in Afro-American affairs and publish a periodical dealing with such research.