New Thinking

To the Editors of The Crimson:

I agree with Spencer Jourdain (letter, April 3) that Black students should understand the importance of respecting Harvard and especially the progressive elements in Harvard's tradition. But my old friend Jourdain is mistaken in advising Blacks at Harvard to "nurture" ethnocentric alumni linkages. And he is equally off the mark characterizing such linkages as signs of "bold creativeness." They are nothing of the sort.

Rather than hi-falutin' talk we need new thinking-rigorous and cosmopolitan-about the role of Blacks at elite institutions like Harvard. When it is forthcoming we'll see new and viable behavior by Black alumni-not Black alumni weekends but large financial gifts by wealthy and not-so-wealthy Black alumni to endow professorships in African Studies or American Studies, like Armenian-American alumni endow in Armenian studies and for study of genocide in modern states, or Jewish American alumni endow in Middle Eastern Studies, or Irish-American alumni in Celtic Studies. It takes more rigorous reflection on these matters than Spencer Jourdain offered if we are to stimulate more cosmopolitan and mature behavior by Black Harvard alumni than that represented in the Black Harvard Alumni-Weekend. Martin Kilson   Professor of Government