Word: internships
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MISCONCEIVED, DESTRUCTIVE, PREMATURE--these are the words Harvard Vice President and General Counsel Daniel Steiner '54 used to describe a report by the Southern Africa Solidarity Committee (SASC) on the University's fledgling South Africa Internship Program, which was funded this September as part of a one million dollar University grant to help Black South Africans. But he missed the mark on all three points...
...only is Harvard's decision-making process often paternalistic, it is also frequently ineffective. The recent controversy surrounding Harvard's South African Internship Program highlights the University's institutional and hierarchical arrogance. But the Internship Program fiasco is only one in a long line of decision-making blunders--foul-ups that have embarrassed Harvard and exposed the ruthless corporate attitude underlying Harvard's liberal veneer...
HARVARD'S SOUTH AFRICAN Internship Program was started in the same way as most other major projects at Harvard: Bok formed a committee. His instructions to the committee seemed benign. He instructed them to "find the programs that Black South Africans want." Ironically, during the first six months that the committee met, there is no evidence that they spoke with any Black South Africans, at Harvard or in South Africa...
Although the list was entitled, "temporary list of available South African Internships," although the list was in the form of a memo from one member of the committee to another, although students requesting information about the internship program were referred to the list, and although members of the committee received copies of the list in their meeting packets, Steiner contends that the list was not connected with the work of the committee. Even though SASC believes that Steiner's statement strains credibility, SASC does not want the actual purpose of the list to be the crux of the debate...
Finally, given the serious shortcomings brought up in the SASC report, why has Steiner yet to renounce any of the programs on the OCS list? The mere fact that Steiner is still entertaining the idea of internships with Namibian organizations that are illegally sponsored by the South African Government seriously questions his commitment to use the internship for its stated goals...