Afro: Waiting for Change

DESPITE THE FACULTY'S January vote to reorganize the Afro-American Studies Department, there will be no changes in the Department's administration or structure until new tenured faculty are recruited.

At its January meeting, the Faculty approved a Faculty Council resolution giving all the Department's teaching members a vote on the departmental executive committee. The legislation also reduced the student's role in running Afro-American Studies by denying undergraduates a voice in tenure discussions or granting degrees. Because of its desire not to dictate the Department's internal affairs, the Council's resolution did not specify what the student's role should be.

It was once believed that after the Faculty Council resolution passed, Afro faculty members other than Ewart Guinier '33, the Department's chairman, would obtain some influence in running the Department. This has not happened. Though no junior faculty opposed the Faculty Council resolution, they are in no position to challenge the Guinier leadership. Since Guinier has controlled his Department for three years, the Afro junior faculty--many of whom are not from Harvard--have little knowledge of how the normal Harvard bureaucracy operates. They have been unable to use the additional influence the new Faculty legislation gives them. Further, it would be disloyal for many Afro faculty members to oppose Guinier for with the exceptions of Ephraim Isaac and Azinna Nwafor '63, the chairman brought every one of them to Harvard.

Thus the only way to bring the mandated fundamental changes in Afro's administration and structure is to recruit tenured faculty with opinions independent of Guinier's. The Faculty legislation calls for the creation of joint departmental ad hoc committees to search for additional faculty members. The past performance of search committees has shown that it generally takes six months to a year (or in some cases even longer) to find one qualified individual for the Afro-American Studies Department. The search may be an unusually difficult one. The 1969 controversy over Afro-American Studies is still prominent in people's minds. Both black and white scholars from outside the University legitimately ask if Harvard has suddenly become serious about Afro-American Studies. Another question scholars will raise will be Harvard's willingness to make the financial commitment necessary to maintain a strong department.

THE MEMBERS OF the search committee will be the key individuals determining the Department's future policy. If the committee consists of comparatively left-wing Faculty members, then the people it brings will not support major revisions. But with John T. Dunlop or Dean Ford determining the search committee membership, there is little possibility of that happening. It is likely that more traditional Faculty members will compose the search committee and they will seek professors who may be political liberals, and will be supporters of the academic status quo.

As soon as additional faculty are found, the Dean (whoever he may be at the time), will take the Department's chairmanship away from Guinier and appoint a new man. The new chairman and his Department will have to deal with an issue only apparently resolved at the January Faculty meeting--the problem of joint concentration. By a narrow 69-66 margin the Faculty rejected Martin Kilson's motion to require students majoring in Afro-American Studies to take at least five half-courses in an outside discipline. If Kilson and his supporters are influential within the search committee, the new faculty recruited may take advantage of the Faculty Council's vagueness to require joint concentrations. Additionally, if the new faculty are academic traditionalists, they may want to severely restrict or eliminate any student role on departmental committees. Such acts would not violate the January faculty resolution.

The debate at the two Faculty meetings concerned with the Afro-American Studies Review Committee Report demonstrated that few white Faculty members had any idea of the issues involved. Specifically, in the discussion of the Kilson proposal, only a few whites felt qualified to evaluate joint concentrations on their merits. Whites opposing the Kilson amendment did so on the grounds that such an action would set the dangerous precedent of the whole faculty instructing individual departments how to organize their curricula.

WILSON'S AMENDMENT failed because he could not get a significant number of white social scientists to unhesitatingly endorse the concept of joint concentrations. In the debate some white Faculty members acted as if they felt Kilson and Orlando Patterson, professor of Sociology, had some hidden reason for wanting required joint concentrations. Also I doubt that Patterson's and Kilson's arguments were accorded the same respect that a white faculty member's arguments would have been, despite their obvious scholarly competence.

Samuel Beer, Eaton Professor of Government, was the only white social scientist to deliver prepared remarks in favor of the Kilson amendment. Beer's endorsement was brief and qualified. He emphasized that he supported the Kilson position, but that he was not an expert Afro-American scholar. Kilson and Patterson needed a white social scientist with credentials in Afro-American Studies to speak for joint concentrations with enthusiasm and conviction. The ideal person would have been H. Stuart Hughes, Gurney Professor of History and Political Science, who guided the Faculty Council resolution skillfully through the Faculty. But Hughes took no position on the Kilson resolution, probably because he thought that doing so might jeopardize the Departmental reorganization. Hughes was so careful on this issue that he abstained from the final vote.

As it was, Kilson and Patterson delivered the major speeches favoring joint concentrations. They did a competent job but ran into problems when President Bok asked what they meant by a discipline. The question is a complicated one, not easily answered in a couple of sentences, and Patterson and Kilson did not handle it well. It is unlikely that their answer to Bok's questions convinced many undecided Faculty members that grounding in a discipline was necessary.

However, because of the vagueness of the Faculty resolution, two of the major issues in the Afro-American Studies debate--joint concentrations and the role of students in the Department--will remain in a state of flux until new faculty members arrive at Harvard.