BLACK STUDIES

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I wish to endorse Roy Wilkins' opposition to the establishment of new, separate, departments for black studies in our colleges. What we need is fewer, not more, departments with their towering walls of isolation and provincialism.

Why not, instead, Centers for Afro-American Studies, operated by interdepartmental student-Faculty committees. Such centers would provide most of the benefits of a full-fledged department, but would be administratively more agile. We already have several splendid examples of centers at Harvard, and they draw on the resources of all departments. Charles A. Whitney   Physicist   Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory   Professor of Astronomy   Harvard University