AFRO REFORM LEGISLATION

To the Editors of The Crimson

Douglas Schoen has done a fine job of reporting on the issues surrounding the review of the Afro-American Studies Department and the Harvard community is very much in his debt. He has also been more right than wrong in his projections of the course of the debate and in Saturday's Crimson (Dec 16th) he correctly suggests that I prefer the needed reforms in Afro-American Studies expressly stipulated in faculty legislation rather than leave such reforms to the machinations of the Faculty Council. I have several reasons for this preference.

First, the Harvard Faculty as a body (not merely its executive agency) is responsible for the situation which obtains in Afro-American Studies today. I therefore think it important, practically and symbolically, that the Harvard Faculty recognize through new legislation that it alone is responsible for rectifying the intellectual shambles it created in Afro-American Studies in April, 1969. These shambles, which stem from the faculty's decision to toss its standards to the winds in face of threats of violence in 1969, require discrete procedures for their removal and I would have more confidence in the success of these procedures if they are entrenched in faculty legislation.

Second, the Harvard Faculty has already included such procedures in legislation it passed when establishing other undergraduate degree programs in interdisciplinary fields. Joint concentrations, the major reform required in Afro-American Studies, should be stipulated in faculty legislation, not left simply to machinations of Faculty Council. This reform is too fundamental to future quality of academic training in Afro-American Studies to be left to what is, In some measure, a political agency like the Faculty Council. Joint appointments should also be stipulated in faculty legislation. They can be stated a desirable policy which would be pursued in a flexible manner, the purpose being to guarantee the superior quality of the future faculty in Afro-American Studies and to ensure the academic integration of this interdisciplinary program-like all other such programs at Harvard-with the wider university.

Third, in order to correct the mistaken proposal of the McCree Committee-the only recommendation of the Committee I question-that the DuBois Institute be organized on an interuniversity basis, it is necessary to stipulate in faculty legislation that the Institute will be solely Harvard controlled and should be organized, in terms of its governing board, on a university-wide basis. The better feature will guarantee the DuBois Institute that range and quality of academic skills without which it cannot succeed.

Fourth, students must be removed from the executive committee of the Afro-American Studies Department and this should be stipulated in faculty legislation. Students lack the skills and habits necessary for the exercise of scholarly authority and they thus have no right on the executive committee of the Afro-American Studies Department nor on that of any other department in this university. Faculty legislation on reforms in Afro-American Studies would be remiss without this item. Indeed none of the foregoing items of reform should be left to ad hoc arrangements; they should be entrenched in legislation. Martin Kilson   Professor of Government