Harvard is very fond of committees.

In the past two years, University officials have appointed committees on ROTC, on educational policy, on free speech, on computer usage and on and on.

In fact, it sometimes seems as though there are more standing committees, ad hoc committees and subcommittees than students, So perhaps having a standing committee that deals with visiting committees--as the University does--is not so surprising.

But in this case the additional body seems not to have arisen from administrative bloat, but rather from a desire to review the reviewers. A final report on Harvard's outside review process, which has undergone a great deal of reorganization during the past two decades, is due at the end of the summer, according to Provost Jerry R. Green.

Visiting committees, virtually unknown by students, work rather quietly behind the scenes. But groups of Overseers and experts in many fields travel to Harvard on a regular basis to examine every aspect of Harvard life, from athletics to visual and environmental studies.

Like Harvard, the visiting committee system is very old, very large and very complex. The number of committees, which date back at least 100 years, has risen to 57, and many have their own ad-hoc subcommittees. There are also five standing committees to which the visiting committees report.

Committees inside the Faculty of Arts and Sciences meet once every three years and others meet every year, each speaking with faculty, staff and administrators and, where appropriate, undergraduate and graduate students.

All the committees, however, release comprehensive reports every three years, which are circulated among departments and deans before being presented to the Overseers.

While the process of choosing visiting committee members is extremely flexible, each committee must have at least one Overseer. Suggestions for other members are solicited from sources inside and outside Harvard, according to Elizabeth A. Gray '70, senior associate secretary of the Board of Overseers.

"It's a way of bringing in outside perspective, peer perspective on our academic programs...and for all sorts of other programs," says Gray, who manages the non-Faculty of Arts and Sciences visiting committees. "The idea is to draw in a very wide, diverse and informed set of perspectives."

The current reevaluation does not mark the first time the visiting committee system has been examined critically. In 1977, a report, spearheaded by then-Overseer president Helen S. Gilbert '26, completely redefined the criteria used for selecting committee members, according to Sheila L. Weiner, senior associate secretary of the Board of Overseers.

Now, Weiner says, those chosen are experts in their various fields. "Before it was sort of a hodgepodge," she says. "People were chosen who were friends of administrators."

And in the mid-1980s, the standing committees themselves were redefined in an effort led by former Overseer and committee member Judge Rya W. Zobel '53, who has served on the Germanic Languages, Arnold Arboretum and Kennedy School of Government visiting committees.

Before the redefinition, Zobel says, graduate schools were lumped together with the Faculty departments of the same character. Now one standing committee deals with the College, continuing education and the graduate schools.

"It seemed not particularly useful to combine reports of the Kennedy School and the Social Studies department," she says. "Graduate schools have problems in common much more than they do with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences departments."