During the 1950s, and particularly after the 1964 military takeover, industrialization produced a transformation of Brazil — a nation of continental proportions occupying half of South America. Modernization affected every facet of Brazilian society, altering the economy and influencing the development of political and educational institutions. Such internal change had considerable impact on Brazil's foreign policy. Brazilians no longer viewed their national interest in traditional and restrictive terms but in a revisionist, expansive and expansionist manner. Populist politicians and writers of the late 1950s, riding on a wave of nationalism, argued that Brazil should become an active participant, a new and aggressive force in world affairs.

To those who peer into the shadows beneath the dazzling peaks of media-lit summitry, the shape of America's projected post (Vietnam) war foreign policy is becoming discernible. Thoroughly nationalist and pragmatic, it stresses advantage and comity in relations with other major powers — whether politico-military (China and the Soviet Union) or economic (Western Europe and Japan). Coonskin zealotry having given way to cost-benefit real-politik, military withdrawal from Southeast Asia is being accompanied by strategic retrenchment. From Guam and Micronesia in the Pacific, to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, to Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, to the Azores in the Atlantic, American air and sea power is taking on an insular “low profile” — while maintaining a long reach. At the same time, domestic postwar introversion threatens a further decline in already minimal American concern for the fate of the world's relatively powerless and economically disadvantaged.

On April 19 of this year the President and Fellows of Harvard College announced their intention to “send a representative to Angola to provide us first-hand information on Gulf's performance, the problems it faces, and opportunities for constructive new steps, and thereby to help us determine our future actions as a responsible Gulf shareholder.”

On April 20, 1972, thirty-five black students at Harvard University — members of the Pan African Liberation Committee (PALC) and of the Harvard-Radcliffe Association of African and Afro-American Students (AFRO) — moved into Massachusetts Hall and announced that they had taken over the administration building in protest over the decision of the Harvard Corporation to retain its stock in the Gulf Oil Corporattion. The occupation lasted seven days and was supported by a large segment of the Harvard student body, many Boston community and church organizations, some of the most prominent black leaders in the United States, as well as spokesmen for the major nationalist groups in Angola.

In January 1972 the UN Security Council accepted the invitation to meet in Africa which had been issued by the African states and, in late January and early February 1972, Addis Ababa was the scene of an historic session. For the first time, Africa's “burning issues” were considered in depth and plans were made to implement earlier decisions adopted in connection with them. Africa's success in having the Council meet on its territory was the culmination of persistent efforts by the African group at the UN aiming, since 1960, at making colonialism and apartheid in Africa matters threatening international peace and security. Today, on the twenty-seventh anniversary of the adoption of the UN Charter, it is necessary to analyze the nature of this evolving relationship between Africa and the World Organization as a case study of UN relationships with the Third World.

The Chinese presence in Black Africa has grown enormously in the last five years and is triggering a dangerous new Great Power scramble for strategic positions.

In the long run, its effect may be to repartition the continent into new ideological and economic spheres of influence. It is forcing the Great Powers to focus aid on areas of strategic value rather than on regions of greatest human need. It is also compelling communist and capitalist powers to overlook racial and social injustice in order to preserve their strategic stakes.

In its present form and function, the socio-political institution of American education does not properly serve citizens of African descent. What is now recognized as higher education geared towards meeting the special needs of black students is commonly labeled Black Studies. It is submitted here that Black Studies programs, in the main, are nothing more than reactions to the oppression that obtains within the institutional system of higher education. Unquestionably, the majority of these programs differ little in concept or approach from academic programs in the Euro-American tradition.

In studying the remote past of nonliterate peoples in Africa (and throughout the world), the historian depends for pratically all his material on archaeology. This means that the empahsis in the methodology of African history is differentfrom the emphasis in that of other histories. This is not to say that attempts to accurately reconstruct the remote past of peoples outside Africa do not involve a similar technique of discovery from material as well as physical remains, but that a greater part of their history is documented and is revealed through the use of conventional historical methods.

In 1974 Nigeria will host the Second World Black Festival of Arts and Culture in Lagos. The first World Festival of Negro Arts was held in Dakar, Senegal, in 1966, and Nigeria was then honored with the role of “Star Country.” In agreeing to host the Second Festival, the Nigerian government is fully aware that the 1974 Festival will be the greatest concourse of black peoples from different continents in the entire history of the black man, and it is therefore determined to ensure that the Festival will contribute significantly to the enhancement of black communion and the resurgence of the artistic and cultural civilization of the black peoples of the world.