"There is a lot of confusion on campus and in the Faculty about what ethnic studies is comprised of," Jung said.

"[Knowles's letter] is another step indicating that there continues to be a need for further clarification and further dialogue," Gupta said.

They said that many of the courses which faculty and administrators labels as ethnic studies--including Chinese History 117 and 188, "History of Relations between China and Inner Asia"--are really "regional studies."

"We don't really have a complete program that looks at race as it is played out in American history," Jung said.

The group defines ethnic studies as "a non-objectifying analysis of difference and pluralism in American society." The authors last night emphasized that they want to identify ethnic studies as an area of rigorous scholarship.

The Knowles-Dominguez letter implies that they do not want to limit the study of ethnicity by creating a concentration. Rather, they urge that Harvard foster greater interdisciplinary discourse.

"Our faculty do not favor limiting the study of ethnicity to a handful of groups whose own self-definition has been changing over time and will no doubt continue to do so," the letter says. "Nor is there a good reason to limit, or to privilege, the study of some ethnic groups at the expense of others."

But the committee members said last night that the University has done just that.

"The way we see the situation right now, we are privileging some groups," Gupta said.

The report criticizes the suggestion that the current variety of academic courses can meet the demands for ethnic studies research and teaching.

"An interdisciplinary coordination of current academic offerings would not engage the body of theory existing and emerging from the field of Ethnic Studies," the report says.

"For this reason, while Ethnic Studies are necessarily interdisciplinary, an interdisciplinary coordination effort alone does not constitute a coherent Ethnic Studies program," it says.

The committee based its report on evaluations and research of other research institutions which have defined ethnic studies curricula, including Brown University, Columbia University and the University of California at Berkeley