Harvard Gets Seven Grants From NEH

Harvard professors have received a record number of federal summer grants this year to sponsor seminars on topics ranging from "The Unity of Learning in the Late Middle Ages" to "Moslem-Ethnic Minorities in the Middle East and USSR."

The seven grants, given by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), make for the largest number the University has received since NEH began the program in 1965. Harvard only invites professors from colleges with limited resources to attend the seminars.

The seminars should promote intellectual exchange among professors and teachers from small colleges and give them the opportunity to use Harvard's research facilities, Jonah R. Churgin, director of finances and resources at the Continuing Education Office, said yesterday.

Yale received five NEH grants this year and Princeton received three, he added.

"In the seminar, teachers of varying backgrounds and common interests can come together," Lewis H. Lockwood, professor of Music, who will teach a seminar on the historical perspectives of Beethoven's symphonies, said yesterday.

Elimination

Because of proposed Reagan administration budget cuts of federal grants, NEH may have to eliminate half of its grants next summer, Churgin said.

Eliminating funding from the NEH program would be "unfortunate" because the seminars "allow professors from remote colleges to keep up intellectually." Orlando Patterson, professor of Sociology, said yesterday. Patterson will teach a seminar on comparative slavery.

NEH gives each profesor about $50,000, most of which they use as stipends for the visiting professors