Keith A. Saunders '75 lasted just one year at Harvard.

Now a dancer with the Dance Theater of Harlem, Saunders, who is Black, said he left after his first year, 1971-72, for several reasons, including academics.

"I only spent one year there," said Saunders from his New York City apartment this week. "My grades certainly weren't inflated, I'll tell you that."

But in the January/February issue of Harvard Magazine, Thomson Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield Jr. '53 suggested they might have been. Mansfield linked grade inflation to the arrival of larger numbers of Black students in the 1960s.

"Grade inflation was very much a phenomenon of the late sixties, when it was consid

Thomson Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield Jr. '53 sparked campus controversy this semester with comments linking grade inflation to increased Black enrollment in the 1960s and '70s. But students, professors and administrators of that time say they disagree with him and offer their own theories. Some blame the Vietnam War; others talk about a cultural change in attitudes toward grades. But with both sides unable to present statistical evidence, anecdotes and observations dominate...

ered a 'power move' for a professor to grade a student," Mansfield said. "Grade inflation coincided with the arrival of large numbers of black students on the Harvard campus; many white professors were unwilling to give C's to Black students, so they also wouldn't give C's to white students."

Asked last night whether he would add to or amend his remarks, Mansfield said, "Let it stand."

But in interviews this week with The Crimson, faculty members, administrators, former teaching fellows and Black students from the late '60s and early '70s expressed little support for Mansfield's views.

Even the man credited with coining the term "grade inflation," Ford Professor of Social Sciences Emeritus David Riesman '34, said the trend was the result of the "counterculture of the 1960s" and predated increased Black enrollment in the College.

Black alumni, in particular, vehemently and unanimously rejected Manfield's assertions. Some blasted him for what they called racism, and in some cases they offered personal testimony to the lowness of their grades.

"As I recall, the first year I got three C's and a D," said Michael D. Robinson '71, a banker in New York City who served as president of Phillips Brooks House as an undergraduate. "I was Group II thereafter; an A, two B's and a C was pretty typical."

Some professors present at the time said the race of a student occasionally may have influenced grade decisions, but they stressed that this alone could not be responsible for the broader trend.

"I think there was a tendency to give obviously bright, motivated African-American students the benefit of the doubt," said James D. Wilkinson '65, director of the Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. But such tendencies were not limited to Black students alone, he said, and were linked more to students' level of pre-college academic preparation than race.

Some Black graduates and professors interviewed said they believed Mansfield should present concrete numerical evidence for his assertion, which he has not done.

Pressed on his evidence for this claim during a March 11 panel discussion at the Institute of Politics, Mansfield said he had anecdotal evidence to support his contentions.