Criticizing Harvard's lack of minority professors and ethnic studies classes, about 25 minority students protested yesterday shortly before a Junior Parents Weekend lecture by Professor of Government Michael J. Sandel in the Science Center.

A similar protest is planned for today at 10 a.m. in the Science Center, according to Asian American Association (AAA) Co-President Jennifer Ching '96.

Yesterday's rally culminated with a speech by Ching, who told about 450 parents and students seated for Sandel's lecture that the demonstrators wanted the University to make a bigger effort to hire minority professors.

In her brief address, Ching also called ethnic studies "an academic field that's been ignored here."

The protest, planned by Raza and AAA, also included representatives from the Korean Students Association, the Black Students Association and otherminority organizations.

Dressed in black and bearing signs withmessages such as "Where Is Our History?," theprotestors passed out flyers and chanted outsideScience Center B as junior parents and studentsheaded toward Sandel's lecture on "Justice."

The group then entered the lecture hall andapproximately 10 students accompanied Ching to thelectern, where they stood in a line holding signsas she spoke.

Members of the group consulted with Director ofthe Parents Association Ellen Hatfield Towne, whois in charge of this weekend's events, beforeapproaching the lectern, Ching said.

This is the third Junior Parents Weekend in thelast five years at which minority students groupshave staged protests.

Minority protestors at last year's JuniorParents Weekend also voiced concerns about theUniversity's faculty hiring practices andcurriculum.

Last year's protest was the first stage of alarge-scale campaign for minority issues organizedby the Coalition for many of the College's mostvocal minority students associations.

Last spring, the Coalition demanded a minoritystudent resource center and an investigation into"institutionalized racism" in addition to a morediverse curriculum and faculty.

"It's been a year [since the Coalition firstmade its demands] and nothing has happenedsubstantially," Ching said in an interviewyesterday, explaining what motivated AAA and Razato organize yesterday's protest.

But Science (FAS) Jeremy R. Knowles saidHarvard has recently made strides in minorityfaculty hiring.

"Since 1991 we have appointed fourAfrican-American faculty members to tenure in theFAS, including one woman," he wrote in statementyesterday that was a response to the minoritygroups' concerns. "This is the sharpest increasein the appointment of tenured African-Americans inHarvard's history."

Knowles' statement also said five of thisyear's 23 new assistant professors are"underrepresented minorities." And the FAS, hewrote, has already received junior facultyacceptances for next year from a Black man inMathematics, a Hispanic man in government and anAsian-American woman in English.