Last spring, the Black Students Association shocked the Harvard campus by distributing a flyer entitled 'On the Harvard Plantation' which listed the group's grievances against the Harvard police and several other College organizations. This fall, the College administration has responded by setting in motion a comprehensive reform of its race relations policies. But BSA President Zaheer R. Ali '94 is not satisfied with the administration's efforts and continues to...

In a tenth grade World History class at High Point High School, a predominantly Black school in Hyattsville, Maryland, Zaheer R. Ali '94 noticed that European history was being emphasized while other cultures were largely ignored.

When he asked the teacher about the omission of African, Asian and Latin American cultures in the course, he was told that the purpose was to study "those areas of the world that had significant impact on world history."

"Rasically, she was saying that Africa, Asia, and Central and South America before European contact had nothing to contribute to world history," Ali says.

At the time, Ali says he did not have the background or experience to challenge the issue further. It was not until 11th grade, when his English teacher took aside her class and "told us what was up" that Ali says he began to be aware of the need to play an active role in asserting Black rights.

"She woke us up," Ali says of his teacher. "She told us never to let anyone make us feel that we did not deserve whatever we got. And she said, 'You will have to fight for everything you get.'"

The next year, in a European History class taught by the same history teacher, Ali wrote an essay on the exploitation of Third World peoples by European expansionism. The result was a surprise even to him.

"In the middle of an A.P. European History couse, she stopped and started teaching us about African kingdoms," he says.

"The foundations of [racism] still exist--the notion of white supremacy and its necessary counterpart, Black inferiority," he says. "I've read it in textbooks. It's a subtext. It's the subtext of the educational system in America."

Now, Ali is president of the Black Students' Association (BSA) at Harvard and a major player in shaping campus opinion on race relations.

"You sit a Harvard graduate and a high school drop-out down and they will tell you the same thing about their prospects of being Black in America," says Ali.

In the uncontested BSA presidential elections last spring, Ali campaigned for "Black Unity of Individuals Laboring to end Dependence" (BUILD), calling on Black students to help themselves, to develop their own resources, and to seek independence from white society.

Ali is a 20-year old Afro-American studies concentrator. Criticized by opponents as a radical and a demagogue and hailed by supporters as a visionary and a dynamic leader, Ali has emerged as a vigorous advocate of improving the situation of Black students on campus.

He is not a revolutionary, but a savvy politician--and an extraordinary speaker--alternatively lambasting a lax College administration when it slows its race relations efforts and allying with campus leaders to build consensus and to handle crisis.

Ali shook the campus in May and startled College administrators into action with the distribution of a flyer entitled "On the Harvard Plantation," which listed grievances of Black students against the Harvard University Police Department, the Law School, The Crimson, and the Peninsula.