Australians Give Gift To Harvard

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser will arrive here today to officially present a $1 million gift establishing an Australian Studies Endowment fund at the University.

Fraser will join President Bok at noon in the Yard to sign a "memorandum of understanding" establishing the fund.

The program will enable Harvard to create a professorship in Australian studies and sponsor visiting Australian scholars.

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The purpose of the fund, according to the memorandum that Bok and Fraser will sign, "is to establish a Chair in Australian Studies and maintain such teaching research and publication as will help promote awareness and understanding of Australia in the United States of America."

In addition to the signing, Fraser will hold a press conference with Dean Rosovsky at 2:30 p.m. in the Faculty club.

The endowment is Australia's largest single contribution to the celebration of the U.S. bicentennial.

At approximately 11:45 a.m., after a private meeting in Massachusetts Hall, Fraser, Bok and Nicholas Parkinson, the Australian ambassador to the United States, will walk across the old yard to University Hall.

The area between Mass and UHalls will be cordoned off to viewers when the entourage crosses the Yard.

Former Australian prime minister E. Gough Whitlam originally presented this gift on July 4, 1975, as part of what he called Australia's role in celebrating the United States bicentennial.

Whitlam, speaking at the Australian-American Ball in Sydney, Australia last year, commended "this proposal to the great companies and corporation--which operate in the two countries. Some of them, I trust, will see the chair as a focal point for further research endowments in their own names in disciplines of special interest to them."