Xeroxed readings on current ternational conflicts provide the examples for Fisher's presentations and the hour-and-a-half section meetings. However, their bulk shouldn't put you off--if you read The New York Times regularly, it really isn't necessary to do any of them.

The course requirements last year included regular attendance at section meetings, the submission of five-out-of-11 problem sets based on the tools learned each week, a 20- to 30-page analysis of a specific international conflict and a five-page synthesis of this longer paper.

The weekly problem sets are really no problem--they are basically a rehash of Fisher's lectures. Grading is relatively easy; students receive four out of a possible six points on each problem set for just following instructions. And although head section man Bruce Patton urges students to hand in nine of the assignments, few complete more than the required number.

The sections and section leaders in the course are some of the best around Harvard. Sections discussions range from an examination of the weaknesses of Fisher's tools to a simulation of a Mayaguez-type incident, where the section is divided into two antagonistic decision making bodies which must try to resolve the conflict.

But probably the most exciting part of the course is the coursewide simulation which last year dealt with the Greek-Turkish conflict over Cyprus in 1974. The class split into a number of teams which then tried to negotiate a peaceful settlement to the confrontation.

The course as a whole, and especially the lectures, need some working on. One good reform would be to replace some of Fisher's lectures after the first month-and-a-half of the course (when the merits of the tools become dubious) with more section meetings, where the tools could be applied and evaluated in simulations. Moreover, in the lectures that are kept, Fisher should invite more guest speakers. Last year, the former mayor of Jerusalem visited the class.

Hum 9a

Oral and Early Literature

Oral literature throve in Ancient Greece and, less celbratedly among the ancient Celts and Mesopotamians, and even among some modern-day Yugoslavs. Harvard's lecture halls, with their crowds of literate students, would not seem fertile territory for this genre.

But there's a bard here, who each year steps onto the stage of Sanders Theater to infect students with his love for ancient legends. Unbowed by his decades of teaching, Albert Lord is himself the most legendary of Harvard professors still actively teaching undergraduates, the kind of man today's students will remember 20 years hence the way returning alumni now recall John Finley.

Hum 9 has painlessly introduced literally thousands of hard-to-impress gut-seekers and science concentrators to Homer's muse and the other folk tales studied in the course. Many of them seem