A sound admissions policy should also provide for special efforts to enroll able minority students because they have unusual opportunities to make important contributions to society after they graduate. By any test, talented, well-prepared men and women from minority groups have greater access to productive careers than ever before. Our national policy of affirmative action reveals the value we now place on finding such persons to fill responsible posts throughout society. Whether minority students eventually hold influential positions in corporations, government agencies, hospital, law firms, and universities or whether they decide to work in disadvantaged communities that lack many kinds of needed services, they will have all of the possibilities that any graduate would have to live rewarding and contributing lives. But because there are still so few minority persons occupying influential posts, they are likely to have unique opportunities to enhance racial understanding and to awaken others to the needs and problems of minorities. In addition, by their example, they may help to raise the aspirations of other Blacks and Hispanics and Native Americans to seek careers and levels of achievement that will help to establish greater equality throughout the society.

The opportunities for minority students to contribute to the understanding of their fellow students and to the welfare of society as a whole seem sufficiently important to us to justify an effort to enroll a significant number of applicants from these racial groups. This policy leads us to admit some minority students with prior grades and test scores somewhat below those of other applicants whom we must turn aside. The same is often true of other students whom we particularly wish to enroll in order to assemble a class of great diversity and promise. This does it mean that we should fix some predetermined goal or quota for minority students or for any other category or group. All applicants must be evaluated as individuals, and attention must be paid in each case to all of the characteristics and qualities that relate to our educational goals. In making these assessments, however, we cannot rely exclusively on prior grades and test scores, since these criteria clearly fail to provide a sufficiently reliable or comprehensive means of helping us achieve our objectives.

Like any admissions philosophy, the rationale just described is based on informed judgment rather than established fact. It does seem reasonable to suppose that special efforts to assemble a diverse student body will add to racial understanding and that well-prepared Blacks, Hispanics, and other minority graduates will have important contributions to make, especially during the next generation. Indeed, the nation faces a bleak and dispiriting future if our assumptions turn out to be incorrect. it is true that these assumptions are articles of faith, like other fundamental tenets of an academic community, and have neither been demonstrated empirically nor been free of criticism. Nevertheless, I belive them to be sound and will continue to uphold them at Harvard and to defend them, as we did in the Bakke and De Funis litigation, against any effort from outside the University to overrule out pol- icies and limit our authority to use our own judgment in admitting students to this institutions.

Race Relations

The topic of race relations at Harvard has been much discussed in recent years. But we have not been as clear as we might be in stating the objectives of the institution against which the climate of race relations can be measured and evaluated. In my opinion, the pertinent objectives are three in number.

First, all students at Harvard should have an equal opportunity to gain as much from their experience here as their interests and talents permit.

Second, we should endeavor to build an atmosphere at Harvard in which all students feel welcome, accepted, and sufficiently confident of their status that they can devote themselves fully to obtaining the best possible education in the broadest sense of that term.

Third, we should encourage the fullest interchange among all students as a means of furthering their own education, mutual understanding, and personal development. The desire for such interchange flows naturally from our commitment to diversity in admissions and helps to explain the maintenance of such programs as the House system in the College. In our view, if makes little sense to come to Harvard without taking advantage of the extraordinary variety of human talent, experience, and outlook represented in this institution, for that is one of the principal values and opportunities that the University affords.

These goals are doubtless shared by other similar colleges and universities. In all these institutions, the record of achievement is uneven, and Harvard is no exception. We have obviously made considerable progress toward our objectives. It is just as obvious that we have some distance yet to travel.

We have come furthest in providing equal opportunities regardless of race; the University does not engage in any overt practices of policies of a discriminatory nature. On the other hand, we have not made as much progress in gaining our second objective. Too many minority students still appear to view themselves as guests in a strange house, not entirely certain how they are regarded and ambivalent enough in their feelings that they find it hard to benefit fully from their Harvard experience.

Our third goal is also only partially achieved. According to the recent Study of Race Relations at Harvard College, substantial interchange does occur among undergraduates of all races. Less than ten percent of all minority students claim to have no white friends and a majority have more than five. less than ten percent of minorities report that they do not mix with whites at meals or in social activities and student organizations, and a majority claim that they often interact in these settings. On the other hand, white undergraduates tend to believe that most minority students are too separatist, and fifty percent of black students concede that mixing socially with whites will "cut down your acceptance with your peer group," at least to some extent. Underlying these perceptions is a widespread belief among all students that interchange between members of different racial groups is often characterized by some degree of defensiveness, stereotyping, and, occasionally, even discriminatory attitudes.

I am not qualified to explore in depth the reasons for these phenomena, still less to prescribe to students how they should carry on their social lives. I am gratified to learn from the Race Relations report that overwhelming majorities of all races wish to improve the racial climate at Harvard, that they believe that the responsibility lies primarily with the students themselves, and that they feel that all racial groups share an equal responsibility to make further progress toward this end. Beyond endorsing these sentiments, I can only emphasize three points that seem fundamental to the goals of the insitutions.

First, acts of racial discrimination are unacceptable and should not be practiced or tolerated by anyone within the University.

Second, efforts to discourage interchange among members of different races defeat the purposes of a Harvard education and are inconsistent with its values and objectives.

Third, while respecting the personal nature of each individual's relationships toward others, the University should encourage any useful effort that promises to increase mutual understanding and diminish racial stereotyping and other subtle barriers that work against a genuine appreciation of others.