Martin, who headed the Division of Applied Sciences, initially disapproved of the Core because it required so little science and thus might discourage “the better students” from attending Harvard.

The gap between science and humanities courses may have been influenced by funding for the Core.

Roughly $24 million out of the $250 million fundraising initiative in 1979 was dedicated to the establishment of the Core. Of that amount $1.25 million came from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Robert E. Kaufmann, associate dean for finances, said that the bulk of the grant would go toward enlarging the junior faculty, primarily in the humanities, to meet the special needs of the Core Curriculum.

The University specifically asked for funds to hire junior faculty in the humanities because the Mellon Foundation has traditionally supported instruction and research in humanities fields.

“We knew they had a long-standing interest in the humanities, so we tailored our proposal to fit their concerns,” Kaufmann said.

When the list of Core classes was released in 1979, it only included eight courses in the Science area.

The Department of African American Studies also complained of having too few courses in the Core.

Professor of Afro-American Studies Ewart Guinier ’33 said that the lack of Afro-American Studies courses in the proposed Core Curriculum “shows that the Core Curriculum is nothing but a publicity stunt for the fund drive the Faculty of Arts and Science will be starting next year.”

Guinier added that Harvard “isn’t preparing students to live in a world where four-fifths of the people are non-white.”

Rosovsky said Guinier’s accusation about the Core “is without foundation.”

When the final list of courses was released in May 1979, it included one Afro-American Studies class—a course on 20th century black literature—in the Literature and Arts area .

In planning the Core, the committee also attempted to recognize an increasingly globalized society—an effort that has again come to the forefront in this year’s curricular review.

“[There] is the emphasis on foreign cultures, which again I think reflects the fact that as late as World War II, when the Gen Ed program was introduced, we saw ourselves only temporarily involved in an international conflict, and it wasn’t until later that we saw that we were going to be increasingly and permanently involved in a more and more interdependent series of countries that made an emphasis in the Core Curriculum along these lines more necessary,” Bok said.

STUDENT INVOLVEMENT