Admissions Deans Deny Kilson Claims

The deans of the Harvard and Radcliffe admissions offices have sent a letter to The New York Times Magazine charging that there are "serious distortions" in a recent Times article on blacks at Harvard by Martin L. Kilson, professor of Government.

The letter--signed by L. Fred Jewett '57, dean of Admissions and Financial Aids, and Alberta Arthurs, dean of Admissions, Financial Aids and Women's Education at Radcliffe--charges that Kilson's conclusions "are far too negative in tone and simply fail to fit the facts."

Kilson has written a reply to the letter, calling it "fatuous and disingenuous."

The Times will print the letter and reply on October 13 or possibly later, Barbara Dubisky, a Times Magazine editor, said yesterday.

In his article, Kilson criticized the admissions office for favoring low-income "ghetto" blacks over "better-prepared" middle class blacks in its selection process, and thereby causing an unusually low level of academic achievement among black students here.

The Jewett-Arthurs letter stated that "probably 75 per cent or more" of Harvard's black students come from middleclass backgrounds and that "those few students who are admitted here from poorer backgrounds tend to outperform their more traditionally prepared classmates."

Other Critics

Jewett and Arthurs also joined several other critics of the Kilson article--including the Harvard Afro-American Students' Association and the dean of the College at Princeton University--in disputing the accuracy of some of the statistics Kilson quoted.

The two deans said that 52 per cent of the blacks at Harvard have grades in Group III or above, while Kilson placed the figure at 48 per cent. Kilson said yesterday that he used the percentage for the 1971-72 academic year while Jewett and Arthurs used the 1972-73 figure.

"It's not so much Kilson's factual information that I object to," Jewett said yesterday, "as his interpretations and conclusions, though I don't know where he got some of his figures. I though some of his statements about the percentage of middle class blacks were off."

Jewett and Arthurs also cited the median verbal SAT score of entering black students at Harvard this year--605--as proof that black students here are "extraordinarily talented." However, Kilson replied that the SAT median for whites is "eighty to 100-plus points higher."

Kilson called Jewett and Arthurs "compulsively patronizing to blacks," and he added, "God save us from our so-called white friends."

Kilson also said that the two deans "know well that it is an open secret at Harvard that a number of younger white faculty apply double [weaker] standards to academically deficient Negro students from low income homes, hoping to expiate the guilt of white racism."

The Times printed two letters criticizing Kilson's article last Sunday, and will print two more tomorrow: one from Bob Higgins, a black author, and another from the executive vice president of the American Jewish Committee.

A Times Magazine staff member said yesterday that the Magazine had checked the factual information Kilson used in the article.

Kilson said he got most of his information from the Office of Tests.

The controversy over the article started last April when the Harvard Bulletin, which was originally scheduled to print it, gave galley proofs of the article to four black students who asked to see it.

The students returned the proofs with a list of alleged inaccuracies in the article, and the Bulletin postponed its publication so that the facts Kilson used could be checked.

Kilson charged that the postponement was due to "political pressures" and that the Bulletin had interfered with his "intellectual freedom" by giving the students proofs of his article.

He also filed a complaint with the Commission of Inquiry and the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities, charging that several University officials had tried to suppress the publication of his article.

Kilson submitted the article to The New York Times Magazine shortly after he found out that the Bulletin had given the proofs to the students.

Kilson said yesterday that Dean Epps and Orlando Patterson, professor of Sociology, have worked with him on trying to get more middle class blacks into Harvard.

"The middle class is not only a monetary distinction," he said, "but also a style of life, a set of attitudes, including high performance orientation."

Harvard should institute a mandatory program for academic "deficients" such as low-income blacks, Kilson said