Beyond these general principles, there are further steps that the faculty and administration can take in order to help achieve the goals I have previously defined.
To begin with, we should make it abundantly clear, as I have tried to do in this letter, that our minority students are welcomed here as fully as any other group of students--because they meet our intellectual standards, because they enrich our diverse community with their presence, because they have much to contribute in later life with whatever assistance we can provide them.
In our teaching programs, we should recognize that the history and culture of minority groups and the racial problems in our society are subjects that are not merely of interest to our large minority populations; they have much to contribute to all who learn here, especially today when there is evidence to suggest that many students come to Harvard with less understanding of these issues than their predecessors had only a decade ago. These concerns touch many areas of the curriculum. They also remind us of the need to maintain our commitment to Afro-American studies under its new leadership, making clear that we regard this effort not as a questionable field of study nor as a political concession but as an opportunity to teach and explore important areas of human experience in this country.
Within the classroom, there are occasional reports of behavior by instructors that appears condescending or subtly racist to some students. Fortunately, the incidence does not appear to be high. In the Race Relations report, large majorities of all minority groups indicated that they had never encountered faculty members or teaching fellows who seemed to question their ability to perform well academically. Only tiny proportions reported experiencing three or more such episodes, and we have no way of knowing whether these incidents were real or only innocent misunderstandings. Even so, significant numbers of minority students seem to suspect that professors and classmates question their ability, and there is undoubtedly some degree of ambiguity in the minds of many of these students as to where they stand, or are thought to stand, academically. In this atmosphere, it is clearly important that faculty members and administrators consider all students on their own individual merits. In addition, we must take particular care to be candid in communicating with students of all races about their academic work and other matters involving their life at the University. Just as we must accord due recognition to minority students when they excel, so also must we be careful not to withhold honest criticism out of exaggerated concern for their sensitivities. For professors and administrators who are not members of a minority group, the latter talk may be considerably harder than the former. So much has been said in recent years about the subtler forms of racism and racial condescension that one can easily become inhibited and say nothing rather than risk being misinterpreted. Yet this temptation must be resisted, for nothing will contribute more than lack of candor to the atmosphere of ambiguity and insecurity that many minority students seem to experience in this community.
Beyond the classroom there has been much discussion of late concerning the desirability of a University-wide Third World Center at Harvard. This project has been the particular concern of a number of minority students, some of whom have asked me to express my views candidly on the subject. I shall do my best to reply in this spirit.
My reaction to such proposals is much influenced by the form that such a project might take. One could conceive of the Center as a physical facility serving as some sort of cultural and recreational resources, nominally open to all students but effectively used almost exclusively by minorities. I would not want to forbid this type of facility any more than I would wish to deny the right of any group of students with similar interests or backgrounds to gather together informally in pursuit of common interests. On the other hand, I do not advocate investing Harvard's resources in such a project. While any group is free to gather and socialize as it chooses, Harvard's aim is to encourage interchange among all types of students. As a result, I would not attach a high priority to any project that might serve, at least symbolically, to emphasize a separation between different races. Moreover, in these times of financial stringency, the University cannot afford to embark upon a commitment to provide special facilities for the social and cultural needs of particular categories of students, bearing in mind the long list of different interests and groups that presently exist in this diverse community.
On the other hand, one can conceive of another type of organization with the primary mission of improving racial understanding at Harvard and supporting activities and programs that bring to the entire community a greater appreciation of other cultural perspectives and traditions. It is this model that has recently been proposed by the committee chaired by Peter Gomes which recommends "that Harvard University establish a foundation devoted to the improvement of relations among racial and ethnic groups within the University."
If there is genuine interest in this project, I will advocate support for the enterprise--modestly at the beginning but more substantially over time if the effort attracts sustained commitment and achieves constructive results. At the same time, we should not allow ourselves to believe that the task of improving racial understanding at Harvard can be simply left to a single institution, however vigorous and resourceful it may turn out to be. Instead, we should all be alert to any useful opportunity throughout the University of address racial problems openly and to promote greater understanding among all groups of students.
Affirmative Action
A final opportunity to contribute to a better climate of race relations involves the appointment of minority professors and administrators and the much-debated topic of affirmative action. Since the future of affirmative action has been questioned in recent months, it might be useful to speculate on what Harvard would do if all government regulations on the subject were suddenly repealed (even though I do not anticipate that this result will occur). If the government did withdraw, would we cast the program off as an unwelcome burden? Or would we continue to observe the principles of affirmative action, albeit in a form better adapted to our institutional needs?
In order to answer to these questions, I should begin by defining what I conceive to be the basic precepts of affirmative action, as they relate to members of minority groups. These precepts are essentially three in number. First, every institution should carefully monitor its performance in hiring members of minority groups. Second, in all job searches, particular efforts should be made to identify possible candidates from these groups by advertising and making special inquires. Third, in its hiring decisions, the university should give specific consideration to any promising minority candidates, but the individual finally selected should be the person who is thought best qualified to perform the job, subject only to the proviso that minority candidates should be chosen if their qualifications are equal to those of the other leading contenders. Contrary to the views of many critics, affirmative action does not require reverse discrimination or the imposition of quotas by universities. Academic institutions may have resorted to reverse discrimination but, if so, such actions presumably resulted from internal pressure, mistaken impressions of the law, or some other cause, and not from any actual legal requirement.
Unfortunately, government agencies have administered affirmative action programs in an excessively cumbersome fashion. In particular, universities have had to prepare elaborate statistical expositions of dubious value and fill out innumerable forms and reports, often at the cost of time that could have been better spent in trying to achieve concrete results. These administrative excesses should be eliminated. On the other hand, the basic principles of affirmative action are not only sound but consistent with the aims of an academic institution. After all, any effort to enlarge the pool of candidates we consider for professorial appointments and key administrative posts will tend to improve the quality of faculty and staff. If successful, affirmative action may also achieve a greater diversity of outlook in the faculty and an opportunity for minority students to gain certain forms of counsel and support that they cannot always obtain as effectively from professors of other races. If these advantages can be realized in a manner consistent with the values and objectives of the University, they represent a clear gain for the institution.
If the principle of affirmative action have an enduring place at Harvard, what are the prospects for further progress? For certain groups, the outlook is good. Asian-Americans currently account for half of one percent of the total population, three percent of the Harvard student body, and three percent of the ladder faculty. On the other hand, prospects are not good for other minority groups although these groups are represented much less well in the Harvard faculty than they are in our students body or in the national population.
What accounts for these differences among minority groups? The most obvious answer is that Asian-Americans have entered academic careers in sufficient numbers that they hold a proportion of Ph.D's that is considerably larger than the percentage that they represent within the national population. Quite the opposite is true of other minorities. Less than two percent of the nation's Ph.D.'s are Black; even smaller proportions are held by Hispanics; and the number of Native Americans holding Ph.D.'s is extremely small. There is little sign that these trends will be reversed in the near future. The point is not that members of these minority groups are uninterested in pursuing educational opportunities beyond the bachelor's degree. On the contrary, in the past few years, large proportions of our Black undergraduates have gone on to study law, business, and medicine than is true of their white classmates. Last year, however, only 2 of 132 black graduating seniors elected to seek a Ph.D., and this record seems generally typical of other exceptionally talented minority students across the country.
I do not mean in any way to quarrel with this pattern of career choices. There are abundant opportunities in the professions for challenging and rewarding careers, and prospects for Ph.D.'s may seem uncertain and difficult in comparison. As long as this pattern persists, however, prospects for improving the proportions of Black, Hispanic, and Native American professors will continue to be poor.
Nothwithstanding these trends, frustration continues over the small under 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 surely 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 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 institutions, 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