A Last-Ditch Effort for Afro-Am

With that sentence, Dean Rosovsky reflects the frustration of ten years of wrangling, rhetoric, and demonstrations over the substance and direction of Afro-American Studies at Harvard. The department had its tenth anniversay last April, and no one--students, faculty or administrators--can look back over these years complacently.

After a decade, the department has one and one-half tenured professors and eight concentrators. Since 1971, the number of concentrators has dropped 76 per cent and course enrollment 58 per cent. Its junior faculty is discontented and its students are furious. Last spring, while Eileen Southern, the chairman of the department, was away on a semester sabbatical, junior faculty met with Dean Rosovsky and the Faculty Council to voice their dissatisfaction with her. At the same time, a series of demonstrations charged the administration--and Rosovsky in particular--with a systematic campaign to destroy the department.

But while the students chanted, Rosovsky moved quietly to put the errant department in order. In meetings with departmental junior faculty, the Faculty Council and President Bok, Rosovsky discussed how to shore up the faltering department. Last week, he unveiled a plan he believes can restore some direction and vitality to Afro-American Studies--the creation of an executive committee of five senior faculty to run the department. The committee, composed of prominent scholars who have intellectual connections with Afro-American Studies, has several tasks, Rosovsky says:

"to define a sense of intellectual mission" for the department;

to act as Afro-Am's senior faculty and guide it in making key policy and personnel decisions over the next few years;

to recruit scholars aggressively for tenured professorships in the department.

The committee members--C. Clyde Ferguson, professor of Law; David Donald, Warren Professor of American History; Richard Freeman, professor of Economics; Orlando Patterson, professor of Sociology; and Eileen Southern, professor of Afro-American Studies and Music--will work first on developing a clear intellectual goal for the department, Ferguson says. Once the committee has agreed on what the intellectual thrust of the department should be--whether policy-oriented or primarily academic, for example--then the committee will find it easier to seek out scholars. "Getting a focus begins to tell you who you want, why you want them and how to go about doing what you say you want to do," Ferguson notes.

Patterson agrees with Ferguson's assessment of the committee's goals, and adds that it will also be examining the department's curriculum, its teaching and its faculty quality in an effort to "bring the department in line with other Harvard departments." He notes that perhaps the most important task of the committee is to convince the Harvard community, especially its students, of the intellectual legitimacy of Afro-American Studies. "Students are acutely conscious of the fact that the study now has relatively little status, and have a right to be concerned," he notes.

Nor does Patterson mince words about the current problems of the department. "If a student leaves this University with a degree in Afro-American Studies, it should carry the same weight as any other degree at Harvard--and I suspect it doesn't now," he notes.

But despite such frank assessments of the department's troubles, Rosovsky, Ferguson and Patterson say they understand what is hanging on the committee's work. "People have already watched what we're doing here and it's easy for other institutions to say, 'If Harvard can't do it, we can't,'" Rosovsky says. Ferguson agrees. "What happens here will influence other programs all over the country--a failure might very well have the effect of stunting and stifling efforts that were so painfully commenced," he notes.

Afro-American Studies' birth at Harvard was indeed painful. The department, created in the aftermath of the Harvard strike of 1969, can't seem to shake that era's legacy of tension, fear and bitterness. Even the Faculty vote establishing the department sparked a major controversy, for the body had committed the exceptionally rare action of disregarding a committee recommendation.

After a year of study, a faculty-student committee chaired by Rosovsky, then professor of Economics, recommended setting up an interdisciplinary concentration that would combine a traditional field such as history or economics with Afro-American Studies. But after the student strike, pressure mounted to create a full-fledged department that would permit an uncombined major and allow students unprecedented governing powers. Although Rosovsky vehemently protested this proposal, the Faculty voted for a department in an emotionally-charged meeting in April 1969.

A newly-appointed committee moved quickly to establish the department by setting up courses and searching for scholars. The committee soon encountered what was to be an increasingly familiar problem--it could not find scholars it wanted to tenure. Southern, the second tenured professor of the department, was not appointed until 1975.

A committee appointed to review Afro-American Studies (known as the McCree committee after its chairman) had highlighted this problem three years previously in 1972. The McCree report criticized the University's failure to appoint more than one tenured faculty member and recommended that it move quickly to bring the number of tenured faculty up to four.

Although the McCree report urged haste in hiring tenured professors, Afro-Am found itself the center of controversy again in 1975, when department members and students charged the University with racism and discrimination in its decision not to offer tenure to Ephraim Isaacs, then associate professor of Afro-American Studies. Isaacs had been recommended for tenure by the department in 1971; four years later, President Bok accepted an ad hoc committee's decision not to offer Isaacs tenure.

The Afro-Am students and faculty charged that the University had previously decided not to tenure an Africanist and to offer only joint appointments (Isaacs had requested a single appointment in Afro-Am). They pointed to the unusual time lapse between tenure recommendation and decision as further evidence of malice. But Rosovsky and Bok countered that the delays occurred because of jurisdictional problems created when one of the bewildering array of committees guiding Afro-Am was dissolved and replaced by an interdepartmental search committee. They denied charges of racism, but Isaacs filed a discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The results of his complaint remain unavailable to the community.

The department's growing pains persisted last year, as a student campaign mounted protesting what some viewed as deliberate administration attempts to weaken the department. Students held a number of demonstrations and rallies for the "strengthening of the Afro-American Studies Department," culminating in a day-long boycott of classes held last May. Student protestors claimed that Harvard has dawdled in its faculty recruitment, deprived the department of adequate funding and is planning to demote it to an interdisciplinary committee without power to tenure or to determine its own curriculum.

Rosovsky denies these charges today. He notes that the University has spent approximately $3 million on Afro-Am over the last ten years, an annual expense of $300,000. "Given the department's size and student enrollments, no one could suggest this was an inadequate resource base," Rosovsky says. Both Rosovsky and Ferguson say decidedly they know of no plans to make the department a committee, and add they do not think such a change possible now. "At this time, it would be practically impossible to change the department to an interdisciplinary committee. We are not writing on a blank slate," Ferguson notes.

But personnel problems still beleaguer the department--and the creation of the executive committee seems to have compounded some existing intradepartmental tensions. Southern resigned abruptly from her position has chairman last June, citing the creation of the executive committee as one of the reasons for her committee. "I told the dean that I did not understand how it could work having both a committee and a chairman. I didn't see how I could work under those conditions," Southern said this summer.

She said she was "bewildered" when she returned from sabbatical to confront the furor over the department. "I was not involved in the many decisions that took place during my absence and I did not have a clear understanding of the proper structures for governing the department. If anyone had sat me down and explained what was going on, I might have a better attitude," she added.

But Rosovsky says he is surprised that Southern thinks she was inadequately consulted. "President Bok and I had a long meeting with Professor Southern during which time we explained what conclusions we had reached, and she suggested names for the executive committee," he says.

"I asked her to remain as chairman of the department, but I wanted Professor Ferguson to chair the executive committee and that is what she didn't want. She felt a dual authority structure was confusing," he notes.

However, students in the department say Southern's resignation may also have stemmed from friction between Southern and department members, especially the junior faculty. "There is a great deal of animosity toward Southern among faculty and students in the department," one former concentrator notes. Some students are more blunt in their appraisal. "Professor Southern's resignation wasn't an accident or a disaster. She alienated students from the department and discouraged them from having any participation in the department. She wouldn't meet with students and wasn't responsive to them," Anthony Brutus '77-5, an Afro-Am concentrator, says.

Southern said this summer, "I am reluctant to make any more that would hurt the department." She could not be reached for comment last week on Brutus's complaints.

But junior faculty are reportedly even more dissatisfied. They met twice with Rosovsky last spring and "severely criticized her manner and style of dealing with them," Brutus says. Southern herself obliquely criticized some of her faculty for egging on student demonstrators this spring, saying that she thinks "students have been manipulated by some department faculty" to believe the department is weak.

Josephine Wright and Harrington Benjamin, assistant professors of Afro-American Studies, declined to comment on Southern's resignation last week.

In addition to Southern's disaffection and the discord within the department, the executive committee will also have to confront three traditional points of contention between Afro-Am and the administration--finding tenured professors, joint appointments and student suspicion of administrative motives.

In defense against charges of inadequate recruiting of tenured faculty, Rosovsky notes that since 1971, the University has considered seven candidates for tenure and offered five professorships, only to be turned down.

The McCree report pointed up one of the possible reasons for such rejection in its 1972 study--a perception on the part of tenure candidates that the department does not receive full support from the Harvard community. The report noted: "One of the problems of attracting eminent black and white scholars to the department is the fact that they have earned acceptance in 'conventional' disciplines at other institutions which they would not want to forsake by going to a department which appears to be 'on trial' and/of accorded second-class status at Harvard." Rosovsky notes that this attitude is still a problem and attributes some of the difficulties in attracting candidates to "the unsettled atmosphere that has prevailed in the department."

Rosovsky offers another explanation--many established scholars in such "conventional" disciplines want joint appointments so as not to lose touch with their special field. "In practical terms, the kind of people we wish to attract are established in a certain field and want to maintain a connection with that field," he notes. Because of this problem, the executive committee may offer candidates joint appointments. But some Afro-Am faculty say that desire for joint appointments indicates a disturbing lack of commitment to Afro-American Studies. Benjamin says, "A wholesale commitment to the department is necessary--many people seem to feel that being allied with another department gives them a legitimacy. There are many black scholars who have yet to come to terms with the legitimacy of Afro-American Studies as an intellectual discipline," he notes. Benjamin also says that a rapid turnover rate among junior faculty "has a tendency to turn senior people off." But Southern protests against charges of turnover, noting that all junior faculty members hired under her tenure have served or are serving their full terms.

Southern offers other explanations for the poor tenure performance. She says scholars refused tenure for a number of reasons--the lack of a graduate program, family ties or spouses with conflicting jobs, and Harvard's inability to top some of their salaries.

As well as trying to solve the tenure mystery, the committee will have to face a largely hostile and suspicious group of student concentrators, who point to the University's poor performance in strengthening Afro-Am over the last decade as proof of its intent to undermine the department. The creation of an executive committee doesn't assuage these students' fears. "I don't see anyone on the committee who is a real ally of Afro-American Studies," Brutus says. "These people have a mainstream perspective," he adds. And Daniel Robinson '79, a former concentrator, says, "I am skeptical--let me see the results. They've set up committees before."

Ferguson says his committee will certainly seek some form of student input, but adds he has not determined the best way to incorporate student opinion. He notes that because students have played a larger role in Afro-Am decision making in the past than most other Harvard students, their expectations are very high. "Disappointing expectations can be even more damaging than simply not making the right moves," he notes. But Robinson says, "Students don't want to make decisions--they just want input."

Neither Ferguson nor other committee members believe these problems of tenure and possible confrontation to be insurmountable. Committee members say that they believe in the legitimacy and intellectual excitement of Afro-American Studies, and want to make sure other Harvard community members think so, too. Although efforts to help Afro-Am have a long history of failure, they remain confident. "This really is a last ditch effort--if this doesn't work, nothing will," Patterson says. Rosovsky and the rest of the committee are laying cautious odds that it will, but this year should prove a crucial test of that optimism