On Afro

To the Editors of The Crimson:

I am outraged by the latest show of student activism on campus--Monday's proposed boycott of classes in support of both South African divesture and the Afro-American Studies Department. Taking a moral stance on racial apartheid in South Africa, certainly one concern of international importance, is one thing, but placing it on the same level as the Afro-Am debate leaves the boycott devoid of any meaning and, rather, turns it into a farcical imitation of the 1969 strike.

Boycotting classes and asking professors to do the same for a human rights issue that one is personally committed to is an acceptable means of protest. Students devoted to ending apartheid in South Africa can protest what they view as Harvard's involvement. But to link the South Africa protest with every other "hot issue" on campus just seems to illustrate a small groups of students' efforts to turn this into the year of minority concerns at Harvard.

If the Afro-Am Department is evaluated by a respected and racially-balanced committee who finds it lacking in academic merit, then Harvard is justified in changing the department. This is not evidence of Harvard's lack of concern for minority needs.

The South Africa protest and the problems with the Afro-American Department are very different issues. I really feel that the "activist" students, in trying to embrace all the issues, have turned an important moral issue like South Africa into one of the finest examples of knee-jerk liberalism that Harvard has yet seen. Charlotte Salomon '79