Last fall, representatives of several minority student organizations asked me whether I would write an open letter on the subject of race at Harvard. After considering this request, I came to realize that the time for such a statement was opportune. In recent months, we have witnessed several events affecting the interests of minority groups that are unsettling to many students. The unauthorized disclosure of a preliminary discussion paper on admissions has caused many people to wonder whether we are reassessing our commitment to racial diversity. At the same time, the country has taken a sharp political turn that casts doubt on the future of many social reforms of the past two decades. Some individuals in high places have gone so far as to call for the repeal of affirmative action. In view of these uncertainties, I have decided to set forth what I believe to be appropriate policies for Harvard on the questions of race relations, affirmative action in faculty appointments, and the admission of minority students. While most of these policies are widely accepted in this community, different people may explain them in different ways and some may even disagree. As a result, in keeping with the nature of a university, I percent the following arguments as my own personal convictions and not as official doctrine.

Admissions Policies

We are all aware that most universities, including Harvard, have been making particular efforts to enroll significant numbers of minority students including Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans. Although universities have also admitted increasing numbers of Asian-Americans, such students have been enrolled in numbers that exceed their proportion of the national population without raising the policy issues discussed in this paper. This practice can be viewed as part of a broader attempt of long standing to assemble student bodies with a wide diversity of backgrounds, talents, and perspectives. Nevertheless, policies that favor the admission of minority students have not been universally accepted but have provoked a heated discussion in the society.

Much of this debate is not particularly helpful because it does not reflect a clear understanding of how the admissions process works and what it is trying to achieve. For example, critics often argue against special efforts to enroll minority students on the ground that they are unjust to applicants with higher grades and standardized test scores who allegedly "deserve to be admitted on the merits." But what are "the merits" and why must they be measured by prior grades and test scores? One cannot begin to answer such questions without first inquiring into the goals that we should seek to achieve in assembling a class from a large number of applicants. And that is a subject rarely discussed by most of the writers on either side of the minority admissions debate.

In an ideal world, where admissions officers knew everything, they would presumably try to admit a class that would permit their university to make the greatest contribution to its students and ultimately to the society as a whole. In order to achieve this goal, an admissions committee would certainly begin by rejecting all applicants who seemed unable to meet the normal academic standards of the university, for no one will benefit if students are admitted who cannot graduate. But suppose that a large surplus of well-qualified applicants remained after this preliminary screening. What would the committee do next? After considering the matter, it would probably select those applicants who would make the greatest progress in improving their powers of analysis, their capacity for legal reasoning, their abilities of self-expression, their capacities for management, or whatever educational goals the institution in question happened to embrace. But even this criterion would not be sufficient in itself; it would need to be modified to reflect two further considerations. Since a university is interested in the growth of all its students--and because we know that students learn much from one another--it would prefer to admit applicants who could bring to the institution some distinctive talent, or special attribute, or set of experiences that would enhance the education of others. And since the university is interested in helping society, admissions officers would also favor applicants who seemed especially likely in later life to use what they learned to benefit the communities and professions in which they lived and worked.

In practice, of course, it is extremely difficult to select students according to these criteria. We simply do not know enough to predict with certainty which students will profit the most from their experience at the university or which will contribute most to their fellow students and eventually to the society. Nor would we readily agree on exactly which criteria to use in order to measure contributions to society or which forms of diversity will be of greatest benefit to other students.

Hampered by insufficient knowledge, admissions officers have tended to rely heavily on prior grades and standardized test scores. Combined judiciously, these criteria do provide a moderately strong basis for predicting a student's grades during the first year following admission (although they correlate less well with grades in subsequent years). As a result, prior grades and scores are the best measures we have to meet our threshold goal of screening out those applicants who are likely to have trouble meeting the normal academic standards of the institution.

But prior grades and scores are much less useful in deciding whom to admit from a large number of well-qualified applicants. Although these criteria help to predict first-year academic performance, they are more an index of a certain kind of native intellectual capacity than a measure of a student's ability to learn and develop over time. Applicants with exceptional prior grades and scores may enter college with sufficient ability to absorb material of great complexity, and that is a factor to consider in assessing how much they may gain from their studies. Over their entire course of study, however, such students may not improve their powers of analysis and, self-expression or even enlarge their store of knowledge to the same extent as classmates with strong but not outstanding talents who work conscientiously throughout their career in the university. Moreover, grades and test scores tell us little about the progress students can make toward subtler educational goals, such as ethical sensitivity, creativity, or a capacity to work effectively with others. For these reasons, in the difficult process of choosing among well-qualified applicants, the standard criteria for admission are certainly relevant, but they are not nearly as useful as many people suppose in helping to identify the students who will benefit most from attending the institution.

Prior tests and scores tell us even less about an applicant's capacity to make a contribution in later life. Numerous studies reveal that even substantial differences in tests and scores explain very little of the variations in the success students achieve in many careers, whether success is measured by salary or by more refined criteria of accomplishment. Ii is true that high grades and scores may have a significant bearing on the ability to succeed in research or in other callings that make unusual intellectual demands. Since universities are legitimately interested in preparing students for such careers, they may well decide to enroll an ample number of applicants who possess exceptional academic aptitude. Indeed, graduate departments may understandably place a dominant weight on precisely this quality in selecting applicants for Ph.D. programs. But universities are also interested in preparing students for many occupations in which a host of other factors play an important role in determining achievement in later life. As a result, admissions officers in selective colleges and professional schools can admit large numbers of applicants with test scores that are substantially below their median without running a significant risk that such students will accomplish less in their subsequent careers.

Grades and test scores are also of limited value in predicting an applicant's potential for enhancing the education of classmates. Such contributions can obviously take many forms that have little to do with academic prowess. Thus, a class admitted solely on the basis of tests and grades might well turn out to be much less interesting and stimulating than a class selected by more diverse criteria. To be sure, one can make a plausible argument that students with outstanding intellectual talents--say, the top tenth or top quarter of the class--will set a high example of academic achievement that may motivate and stimulate their peers. Even so, there will be more than enough room for these exceptional students whether or not an admissions committee seeks to enroll other applicants with different talents and characteristics that promise to contribute in other ways to the strength of the class as a whole.

In view of our admissions objectives, what can we say about the status of minority applicants in the ad-

Notwithstanding these trends, frustration continues over the small number of minority professors. At times, such attitudes take the form of impatience over the procedures and methods of affirmative action and a desire to talk only about results. At other times, claims are made that our appointments criteria are biased and wrongly conceived and that satisfactory progress would surly occur if the faculty could somehow be persuaded to alter their traditional standards.

Let me make clear that I reject these arguments and believe that they neither reflect Harvard's best interests nor take accurate account of the underlying problem we face in finding more minority candidates for the faculty. Having personally participated in more than two hundred tenured appointments over the past ten years, I feel strongly that our criteria for choosing faculty are soundly conceived and fairly administered. Standards for professorial appointments must reflect the central mission of an academic institution, and missions vary among different types of universities. At Harvard, our overriding objective is to pursue the discovery and transmission of knowledge at the highest and most demanding level. In each faculty appointment we make, our aim must be to find the best available person anywhere in the world to help further these purposes. The constant struggle to maintain this standard is chiefly responsible for whatever reputation Harvard enjoys in the academic world. The success we have achieved in meeting this standard has also accounted, directly or indirectly, for the decision of most of our students to attend this institution.

I would agree that diversity in our faculty may bring intangible values to our community, It can be argued that minority professors may have a special perspective that will yield valuable insights in certain fields of study. If such perspectives can actually be shown to have added to the quality and originality of a candidate's work, they must of course be given due weight in assessing the candidate's contributions to learning and knowledge. and I also recognize the special support and encouragement that minority faculty can often provide for our minority students. These advantages provide added reasons for a strong affirmative action effort and for appointing minority scholars whenever they have academic abilities that are equal to those of the other leading candidates. But none of these considerations offers a sufficient reason for departing from our primary commitment to appoint those candidates who are most likely to contribute the discovery and transmission of knowledge.

As a practical matter, moreover, efforts to increase minority representation by altering selection policies are missions process? Some writers have argued for the enrollment of significant numbers of minority students as a form of compensation for injustices visited upon racial groups especially during earlier periods of our history. But such arguments raise many trouble-some questions. It is quite unclear which of the many deprivations and injustices in a society should entitle students to such treatment, or whether every applicant from a minority group is truly more deserving of favored treatment than every while applicant who is rejected, or whether Harvard as an institution bears enough responsibility for earlier injustices to have an obligation to respond in this fashion. Instead of embracing such theories, therefore, I prefer to rely on different, more forward-looking reasons to explain our policies. To begin with, the selection of minority applicants furthers Harvard's commitment to assembling a diverse student body. surveys of our graduating classes have repeatedly shown that students believe they have benefited as much in their personal development from contact with each other as they have from their readings and lectures. Studies of other institutions suggest that students who can interact closely by living together in campus facilities show greater progress toward important educational goals than students who commute to nonresidential colleges. as a result, an enlightened admissions committee will wish to assemble a class with widely varying backgrounds and talents so that every student has a chance to encounter a broad range of values, perspectives, and experiences from which to draw stimulus in developing as a person. From this standpoint, in a country where racial issues are so important, everyone can benefit from the chance to live and work with classmates of other races who bring differing attitudes and experiences with which to challenge and inform one another and increase the understanding and tolerance of all concerned.