Executive Committee To Run Afro-Am

In a move to bolster the controversial Afro-American Studies Department, Dean Rosovsky has created an executive committee of five prominent senior faculty to govern the department.

The new committee, which Rosovsky said he expects will strengthen the department, has several tasks:

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

to recruit scholars aggressively for tenured professorships in 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.

Acting Head

Chidi Ikonne, assistant professor of Afro-American Studies, will serve as acting chairman of Afro-Am. Ikonne replaces Eileen Southern, professor of Afro-American Studies and Music, who resigned in June partly because she said she did not understand how she could work with the executive committee. Ikonne will work under the supervision of the committee, Rosovsky said.

Consulting

Rosovsky said he consulted with President Bok, the Faculty Council and department faculty members last spring and decided that "the best way to provide immediate vigorous and practical support to the department is to call upon the experience and energy of other Harvard scholars with professional expertise in various aspects of the field."

The committee members are C. Clyde Ferguson, professor of Law (chairman); David H. Donald, Warren Professor of American History; Richard Freeman, professor of Economics; Orlando Patterson, professor of Sociology; and Southern.

In Line

Patterson said last week he hopes the committee will be able to "bring the department in line with other Harvard departments. 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 said one of the most important tasks facing the committee will be to convince the Harvard community of the intellectual legitimacy of Afro-American Studies.

Two student concentrators said last week they doubted the committee would strengthen the department. "I'm skeptical--let me see the results. They've set up committees before," Daniel Robinson '79, a former concentrator, said.

Anthony Brutus '77-5 said he does not believe the committee members support the department. "I don't see anyone on the committee who is a real ally of Afro-American Studies," he added.

Ferguson said the committee plans to seek input from both junior faculty and students. Afro-Am's junior faculty last spring voiced their dissatisfaction with the department and with Southern at two meetings with Rosovsky, Brutus said.

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

Rosovsky said he hopes the committee will reverse past University failures to attract prominent scholars in Afro-American Studies to Harvard. In the past eight years, Harvard offered tenure to five scholars, and each refused it.

The department now has one and a half tenured professors--Southern and Ewart Guinier '33, who is semi-retired. The lack of senior faculty in Afro-Am drew harsh criticism last spring, as students held a series of demonstrations charging Harvard--and Rosovsky in particular--with failing to search aggressively for tenured faculty, depriving the department of funding and planning to demote it to an interdisciplinary committee.

Rosovsky denied these charges last week. He said the University has spent a total of $3 million on the department over the last decade, and added that he believes it would be very difficult to change the department to a committee.