A brief history of the proposed Foundation to promote racial understanding at Harvard is illustrative, not only because it provides a case study in the University's bureaucratic process, but also because it shows the significant irony of the end product.

In spring 1980, a small, well-organized group of student activists petitioned President Bok for a campus Third World center. The students hoped a center would offer a support system for minorities at Harvard, along the lines of centers at several other prestigious universities such as Yale, Princeton and Stanford. Bok acknowledged that the proposal merited investigation, and he formed a student-faculty committee to investigate it. He gave the Rev. Peter J. Gomes, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals, the chairmanship of the committee.

The nine-member group determined that Third World students at the University have legitimate needs that were not being met by existing institutions--the Houses, the Freshman Dean's Office, the Bureau of Study Counsel and other organizations designed to give support to students.

This finding was neither surprising nor an affront to those institutions. Part of the problem lies in Harvard's loose, informal advising network; but mostly, the deficiency is attributable to the fact that these organizations were established to meet other needs.

Until 12 years ago, diversity at Harvard meant that there were good athletes, academics, and artists living in the same community. Now diversity has become a catch-word for the University's often-stated commitment to bringing students of all races and economic backgrounds to Cambridge, weaving them into Harvard's fabric and assuring that they consider themselves an integral part of the community.

The Gomes committee concluded that while University admissions had done a good job attracting minority students (Harvard was cited as having an exemplary admissions procedure in the Supreme Court's Bakke decision), the rest of the University was lagging in its responsibility once Third World students actually got here.

But the committee rejected a Third World center as a solution, arguing that such centers are often perceived as "separatist" at other schools and that "the perception almost always assures the reality." Instead, the group called in its January 1981 report for the creation of a Foundation to improve race relations by encouraging interaction between majority and minority students.

At first, the student group that asked Bok for a Third World center called the proposal "workable." By March, though, the group had disavowed the Foundation, saying it was not designed primarily to attend to the needs of Third World students, but to further the goal of better race relations. Furthermore, the student Third World Center Organization said, the burden of the Foundation's success was being put on the shoulders of minorities instead of the whites who were often "racially insensitive" to their situation.

Minority students did not disagree that better race relations should be the long-term objective of a Third World center. They simply contended that race relations would improve only when they felt more comfortable here.

The Foundation debate took place in the context of growing fear among Third World students. Cross burnings at nearby Williams and Amherst Colleges occurred last fall; a new president perceived as a threat to affirmative action was elected; and events at Harvard aggravated the tension. In mid-October, a preliminary report on Harvard admissions prepared by an assistant to Bok was disclosed. The report said that high test scores often overpredict the academic performance of women and minorities at schools like Harvard, a finding which Third World students called "invalid" and "racist." In early November, the president of the Black Students Association, Lydia P. Jackson '82, received a death and rape threat from an as yet undetermined caller warning her to refrain from "political activities."

The Gomes proposal proceeded to the Faculty, where professors discussed it on a philosophical level before getting down to nuts and bolts. Faculty reaction was lukewarm at best.

And so, by last spring, the Foundation had reached the stage where almost no one publicly believed in its viability besides Gomes and Bok. The students who had sparked discussion about the project wanted no part of it. Nathan I. Huggins, chairman of the Afro-American Studies Department, thought it unnecessary, saying the effort to improve race relations should be directed through the House system. Faculty conservatives thought it unwise, saying it might aggravate race relations.

Lacking open support on almost all fronts, Bok nonetheless referred the Gomes proposal to Dean Rosovsky and told him to set the Foundation in motion.

Over the summer, S. Allen Counter, associate professor of Neuroscience at the Medical School, was named the first director of the Harvard Foundation. He will operate out of an office in University Hall under the auspices of Dean Fox. The Foundation's governance structure will have three components under Counter:

* a student committee of representatives culled from various campus Third World organizations and including majority students;