Bok: ...though grades and test scores are certainly relevant and helpful in trying to decide which students are capable of doing good academic work, they are by no means the only factor that can enter in a sound admissions decision. They don't tell you very much about what students will do after they graduate. We're interested in educating students who will make a distinct contribution, and in a country where there are so few minority persons in leading businesses, law firms, hospitals, government agencies, we feel that a well-trained minority student may make a distinctive contribution, especially in a country which suffers from the racial tensions that we've experienced.

Another consideration lies in trying to put together a class... in which there's a real diversity because students learn as much from each other as they do from the professors, the tests and the papers...

... for a court to say that race is of no relevance is unwise, first for the reasons I've indicated, but there's another, deeper reason. Even if one disagrees with the points I've made, I hope we would all agree that this is a difficult question, reasonable people can differ about how minority students should be treated in the admissions process. For that reason it's very, very important that these decisions be made through experimentation, through trial and error, by the admissions officers who are really experienced in the process of trying to put together a good class to create a good educational experience. It would be most unwise to take up a question where there are differences of opinion of this kind and subject it to a uniform, rigid rule in all institutions, imposed by judges who, good as they are, do not have intimate, first-hand knowledge in the nuances and subtleties of the admissions process.

Monroe: If you take a, pick out a student give him preference because he is a member of a racial minority, would you be willing to call that reverse discrimination?

Bok: ...We can attack anything by attaching labels, but I don't think labels really get at the subtler process of how we admit students in ways that will enhance our contribution and the educational experience students undergo.

Fiske: During the 1960s Harvard... made commitments to minority education. In the last few years, however, these gains seem to be eroding. At Harvard, for instance, in virtually every department, the number of blacks peaked somewhere from '72 to '74 and is now declining. Wouldn't this suggest that that commitment itself has weakened?

Bok: No, I don't think that is true. In the first place I would dispute your figures.

Fiske: Well, they came from your staff.

Bok: Oh, but I would take you faculty by faculty and indicate that there's been no little significant drop-off in a number of schools, there's been more of a drop-off in others. There are a number of reasons for that. It's not a lack of commitment... For example, there are many other institutions which are now competing heavily for able minority students so that it is only natural that in some places we're having more difficulty.

In addition... one has to weigh some of the factors that lead me to put some emphasis on race in the admissions process with a number of other factors. And one's weighing of those may change over time with greater experience. But we, at this point in the College, for example, number about one-third of all the black students in the country with board scores over 700 and about 15 per cent of all the black students with college board scores over 600. Now you couldn't achieve that without a very intensive effort. And I don't see any weakening of that effort by any means.