Kilson and Guinier agree that blacks who come to Harvard are generally not as well prepared academically as their white counterparts. As a result, black students' academic needs often differ from those of whites. Kilson and Patterson say Harvard's Afro program should not sacrifice traditional Harvard academic standards to meet black students' special needs. Guinier's having done so, they claim, has made Afro a poor sister to the other departments.

"If the Afro Department is going to become a part of the University," Kilson said, "it needs higher standards."

Guinier does not believe that Afro can ignore Harvard black students' special needs. Guinier said in an interview this month, "The issue of blackness causes a lot of tension at Harvard. Tension comes when you are not comfortable about recognizing differences. But these differences do exist and you have to recognize them as factual. In order to gain equality some remedial action has to be taken."

(By way of remedial action Kilson has suggested special reading and writing courses be set up for students needing them.)

Both Kilson and Patterson have suggested various plans to improve the academic quality of the Afro. Each believes that the first step necessary is improving the Department's faculty. Kilson and Patterson agree that in order to attract top scholars joint appointments must be created. To attract new faculty to Afro they must also be given positions in Harvard's older and more stable departments. This should be done, said Kilson, "even at the risk of having white faces in the [Afro] Department."

Kilson and Patterson also agree that the students' power to vote on faculty appointments must be taken away. The Review Committee supported this position in its October 1972 report.

When the Faculty considered Afro at its meeting in January, Kilson proposed an amendment requiring joint concentrations for all Afro majors. Patterson and Kilson believe that such a step is necessary because Afro-American studies is not a traditional academic discipline and because without training in a recognized discipline black students will leave Harvard without a marketable skill.

Kilson's amendment requiring joint concentrations was narrowly defeated last January. One of the amendments's opponents, James S. Ackerman, Professor of Fine Arts, said at the time that telling a Department how to run its affairs would make that Department second-class. Nevertheless, talk of requiring Afro concentrators to master a "core discipline" remains part of the Afro debate.

THE controversy over the Afro-American Studies Department has fallen into Dean Rosovsky's lap and no doubt Rosovsky himself must lead the Faculty to an eventual resolution of the dispute.

Rosovsky is no new-comer to the problem of black studies at Harvard In 1969 he chaired the first Faculty Committee on African and Afro-American Studies and his report first impressed upon the Faculty the need for an expanded program in black studies.

Although Rosovsky may have been among the first proponents of an Afro-American Studies Department, he was hardly the most radical. The 1969 student demands for a black studies program went far beyond the Rosovsky Committee's suggestions. When the Faculty decided to create an Afro-American Studies Department in April of that year, it opted for a department whose design came from the Association of African and Afro-American Students, not for one designed along the Rosovsky recommendations.

Rosovsky was not slow to express his indignation over his colleagues' action. The day after the Faculty vote accepting the AAAAS proposal, Rosovsky resigned as chairman of the Standing Committee on Afro-American Studies.

Rosovsky's objection to the Faculty legislation centered on the placement of students on the Department's executive board. Such a step, Rosovsky said, "went beyond traditional academic guidelines." The resolution adopted by the Faculty differed from the Rosovsky report not only by giving students voting power on faculty appointments; the Faculty failed to heed the Rosovsky report's advice that the new Afro Department be set up to supervise combined majors.

Rosovsky sits in the Dean's chair at a time when the Faculty is anxious to restructure Afro along "traditional academic guidelines." It is probable that Rosovsky finally will have his way and the Afro Department will come to look more and more like Rosovsky wanted it to in 1969.

Rosovsky is presently on the committee searching for new tenured faculty for the Afro Department. Rosovsky was to have chaired the committee, which was appointed before the new Dean took office, but Robert J. Kiely, associate dean for Undergraduate Education, replaced him as nominal leader of the committee. Kenneth O. Dike, professor of History, and Guinier are the other members of the committee.