Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will like them only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them. --Anacharsis to Solon

The fall term of academic year 1975-1976 marked the beginning of a very large and concentrated offensive by various campus groups for democratic rights. While Harvard has been the site of previous struggles for democratic rights, the mass character of this latest struggle was evident even to the most distant observer.

The arena for this struggle was centered around Affirmative Action. "Affirmative Action," an often referred-to term, and rarely understood, became a common part of the vocabulary of many Harvard students and workers (and administrators, much to their own regret).

What Is Affirmative Action?

The struggles by women and oppressed nationalities (Afro-American, Chicano, Asian-American, Native American, Puerto Rican) for democratic rights in the 1960s reconfirmed for the millionth time the truism that it is the masses in motion who make history. Unable to be constrained, these dynamic mass movements pressed forward, insisting that the U.S. government accede to their demands for justice and equality.

One of the government's responses came in the form of several reforms, accumulatively referred to as Affirmative Action. These laws (including sections of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Executive Order 11246) called for all institutions hiring more than 50 persons and receiving more than $50,000 in federal funds to submit a plan to the government showing how the institution intended to take affirmative steps to cease discrimination and correct for past discrimination. But, as we can see from Anacharsis' statement, a law is next to meaningless for the poor and oppressed, particularly if it is not enforced. Non-enforcement of guidelines is an integral part of the history of Affirmative Action. When no active organized compulsion is exerted by the mass democratic movement on the government, history shows that "progressive" legislation, Affirmative Action included, will rot and wilt before it is enforced.

The Spider Weaves Its Web

Harvard's experience with Affirmative Action dates from its first attempts at getting its plans approved in the early 1970s. Of the plans which Harvard submitted to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (in charge of enforcing Affirmative Action), the first three were so poor that even HEW had to reject them as inadequate.

Harvard's present Affirmative Action plan was accepted in 1973 much to the objection of women's and minorities' groups. Inadequacies were rampant in the university's plan, including ridiculously low goals and timetables, as well as non-consultation with representative organizations of affected parties (women and oppressed nationalities). Rather than deal openly and justly with the demands and criticisms presented by these groups, the University did everything to ignore the plan's opponents.

The Victims Resist

Even before Affirmative Action came to Harvard, students and workers were actively struggling for democratic rights. The 1969 struggle by Afro-American and white students won the Afro-American Studies Department. 1970 witnessed the struggle led by Afro-American students for more minorities hired on sites of University construction. Affirmative Action only represented a nzw focus for democratic rights work.

Up till 1975, efforts towards winning a new Affirmative Action plan and protesting the University's historic anti-women, anti-national minority discrimination, were rather isolated from one another and relatively weak. The different movements (women's, national minorities', workers') operated separately and often eyed each other with mutual suspicion. Individual struggles were waged, but partly because of the way in which they were conducted (unco-ordinated, no far-sighted leadership, lacking a mass character) they were only successful in calling attention to the issue of Affirmative Action.

One group which had been active in this movement (struggling for democratic rights) was the United Committee of Third World Organizations (UCTWO). The UCTWO, which had originally been formed to defend the Afro-American Cultural Center when it came under intense University harassment in 1974, began probing to determine various routes which a struggle for democratic rights at Harvard could take. One subcommittee hit upon Affirmative Action. It was from this subcommittee along with other veterans of the Affirmative Action struggle in other areas that the embryo of the Task Force on Affirmative Action was formed.

The Web Begins to Tear

The fall of 1975 was a period of great confusion for the democratic forces, particularly those within the student movement. The DuBois Institute struggle, which had captured the attention of students during academic year 1974-1975, had met with certain tactical set-backs--particularly with its full establishment in accordance with the University's own backward plan.