Harvard Gives Tenure Post to Negro

The Corporation has approved the appointment of Harold Amos, Silan Arnold Houghton Assistant Professor of Bacteriology and Immunology. Professor Amos is the third Negro to gain a position with tenure in Harvard history.

Mainly concerned with research relating to bacterial metabolism, Amos has made several important contributions to the study of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and RNA (ribonucleic acid).

Recently, Amos' research has revealed that animal cells can receive messenger RNA from other cells and translate the messages so that the cell may produce proteins which it ordinarily is unable to make.

An assistant professor since 1960, Amos first came to the Medical School in 1948, after spending a year as a Fulbright Scholar at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. A graduate of Springfield College, he received his doctoral degree from Harvard in 1952.

With Amos' appointment, Harvard drops out of the group of universities cited in a New York Times survey two months ago which have no Negro faculty members with tenure. Out of 17 major universities surveyed, the Times discovered that six, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Stanford, had no Negro professors and that the rest had only one or two.

Dean Ford has since stated that the University makes no special effort to appoint Negroes to professorships, because Harvard Departments use the same standards for all promotions of scholars to tenure positions.

"Scholarship is the only criterion for tenure appointments," said Ford at a press conference six weeks ago, "and the University would not be doing anyone a favor by taking a Negro if he is not qualified, merely because he is a Negro."

Ford explained the present scarcity of Negro professors by pointing out that the Negro community is just beginning to produce an academic elite. To produce a great number of scholars who can meet the demands of academic competition is "not possible within the first generation" of the development, he said.

Ralph Bunche and a former associate professor at the Medical School have been the only Negroes to hold Harvard professorships previous to the appointment of Professor Amos. Bunche served as a professor of Government for a very brief period several years ago before resigning to accept his present position as Undersecretary of the United Nations.