Afro Is Notably Absent

President Bok's appointment this week of the Board of Advisors to the W.E.B. BuBois Institute may cap a long-standing controversy over the relationship the research institute will maintain with the Afro-American Studies Department.

In his announcement Wednesday, Bok named 12 Faculty members (nine of them black) to the board, but did not include any members of the Afro-Studies Department.

The appointments did not comply with a recommendation made last December by the Committee to Establish the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research, calling for a board "drawn from the Harvard faculty, from scholars in the field of Afro-American studies and from the Black American community."

The Board's current make-up would indicate no structural connection will exist between Afro and the institute.

Most conspicuous in his absence from the Board was Ewart Guinier '33, chairman of Afro and long-time advocate of a formal juncture between his department and the institute.

Guinier said in response to Bok's selections, however, that there was "no reason for the Afro Department to be treated as a second-class department" and urged Bok to treat Afro "with the respect and dignity with which he treats all other departments."

Bok and Walter Leonard, special assistant to the president and overseer of the institute plans, said this week they did not name Guinier to the Board because of his repeated objections to the current concept of the institute.

Bok says the Institute ultimately will "be related to the Afro Studies department" but his appointments leave unclear what form that relationship will take.

"Because Guinier was not in sympathy with the institute, it would have been an imposition to ask him to serve," Bok said. Leonard added that Guinier, who has had no formal connection to the institute since January, will probably not have munch say in the choice of a new director.