1400 Sign Petition Seeking No More 'Political' Firings

The Radcliffe-Harvard New American Movement (NAM) has collected 1400 undergraduate signatures on petitions which call for Administration commitments to hiring of radical faculty, a permanent and autonomous Afro-American studies program and increased student participation in faculty hiring.

NAM will continue gathering signatures at tables in the Union, at Radcliffe and in the Houses. The petitions will be held in anticipation of the proposed strike by students in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

NAM also decided Thursday night to support any strike action taken by a revived Graduate Student and Teaching Fellow Union.

NAM earlier this week confronted James S. Ackerman, professor of Fine Arts and chairman of the Commission on Inquiry, with their demands for review of recent allegedly politically-motivated "firings" of radical faculty, particularly Samuel S. Bowles, associate professor of Economics.

Ackerman said he told them that the Commission does not take up ideological issues. It is empowered only to see that the rules of the Faculty are observed. Ackerman said last night that in this case the rules were observed.

Ackerman advised the NAM members to work through the Review Committee currently studying possibilities of revising the Commission. Ackerman proposed yesterday at the Committee meeting that the Commission be empowered to hear NAM's objections to recent firings and similar cases.