AlumniHold Yard Rally For Afro-Am

A group of Black alumni and seniors formally urged seniors yesterday to join a recently formed alumni committee to support Afro-American Studies. The Black group also called on the Afro-Am Department to tenure a former assistant professor of Afro-American studies.

"I think Afro-American Studies is one of the last institutions speaking to Black needs on Harvard's campus," said Ricardo Guthrie '80, one of the group's organizers, in a press conference in front of John Harvard's statue in the Yard. Minority students have a large stake in seeing that the struggling department survives, Guthrie said.

The Afro-Am Department this year attracted no freshman concentrators, a problem mentioned yesterday by alumni organizer Aaron Estes '80 when he argued that the department is currently threatened with extinction. The department is not "put out as a viable option" to freshmen, Estes said.

Black Student Association (BSA) President Curtis Hairston '84 said yesterday that such alumni groups--which he believes will be crucial to Black undergraduates as a source of guidance and funding--will begin to take on added importance next year.

"You have a certain number of students who are politically conscious while they were here, and I don't think after four years they can just forget what they've done here," Hairston said. He added that many seniors have vowed to continue direct participation in campus issues.

The alumni group is urging the University to begin to bargain "in good faith" with Ephraim Isaac, a former assistant professor of Afro-American studies, who has charged the University with racial discrimination for denying him tenure in 1975.

The University said at the time that it was seeking to shift the emphasis of the department away from Africa--Isaac's academic speciality. But members of the group say the tenure denial was not a matter of adjusting the department, but rather "a very clear political move."

Isaac has been persuing his complaint since that time, and members of the Black group said they hope to exert more pressure on the University to bring the complaint to a speedy resolution.

"I think we can do much more than just let justice take its due course," Guthrie said.