* a 12-member committee of University Faculty and staff; and
* a group of approximately ten associates not connected with Harvard who will advise the Foundation and try to raise funds for its programs.
The student committee will be formed early this fall, and the Faculty committee has not yet met. So far, Counter has asked author Alex Haley, conductor Seiji Ozawa, and United Nations treasurer Rivington Winant to serve as associates.
Bok said at the time of Counter's appointment this summer that while there had been "some ambivalence" about the Foundation in several areas of the University, he "wouldn't be too pessimistic" about the Foundation's chances for success.
Counter has been out of town and was unavailable for comment, but he told the Harvard Gazette this summer that he opposed the idea of a Third World center. The activities of the Foundation, he said, "should not exclude the majority students because it seems to me that our ultimate goal is to get the majority students to recognize the presence and achievements and basic sameness of all students here."
Counter has pledged to work vigorously on the Foundation's behalf. But he opposes the idea of a physical facility for the Foundation. He said a cultural center could come to be known as "'That Third World building.' I don't want a place that majority students would feel uncomfortable coming into." One of the basic demands of students who set in motion the Foundation's evolution was a building with office space for campus minority organizations and a large meeting room. The groups trying to obtain building space will no longer do so through the Foundation, but Third World students last spring started soliciting funds from minority alumni to be used for the creation of a center without the University's financial assistance.
Gomes, who will sit on the Foundation's Faculty committee, says he thinks the University has made a wise decision by setting up the Foundation and installing Counter as its head. "The long view is the right view," he says. "We're most in need of a change not in policy, but in ethos."
For the Foundation to flourish, Gomes adds, it will need to gain lasting credibility with the Faculty. "The Foundation is meant to bring the community together, not to endow estrangement. We might not get quick results, so the project will require patience from all involved parties."
Thus far, Counter has tried to organize public policy programs in co-operation with the University's graduate schools, intercultural events and colloquia. He is working with Myra Mayman, director of the Office of the Arts, and has begun to encourage programs focusing on the scientific contributions of minorities.
Consider three plausible scenarios for the Foundation's future which readily come to mind.
In the first scenario, the ideal from Bok's and Counter's points of view, the Foundation attracts participation from both minority and majority students. The Foundation works as a sort of cultural and intellectual clearinghouse, fostering greater understanding among the races and giving Harvard another proud accomplishment to point to in its ongoing attempts at pioneering.
In the second, less palatable scenario, the Foundation starts strongly but loses momentum as it becomes clear that white students don't want to use the Foundation's resources to learn more about minorities and that Third World students think their time is better spent in political mobilization or in the libraries. The Foundation doesn't grow, but impatience does. Its funding is withdrawn after a few years, and the president of Harvard makes a regrettable statement calling the Foundation a noble, but unsuccessful, venture.
In the third and most distasteful scenario, the Foundation never gets off the ground but continues to flounder along, co-sponsoring speeches and the like but never becoming significant enough to outgrow the single office it maintains in University Hall. Third World students and white students show no real interest, but the Foundation offers a ready excuse for those members of the community who wish to rebut the notion that Harvard does nothing for its minorities. The presence of the Foundation furnishes a convenient excuse for those of this ilk to shunt aside minority concerns and avoid confronting the issue head on.
The immediate task facing Counter is to reconcile a wide variety of opinions and to correct misperceptions about the Foundation. It's stated goal is to search for common ground among the diverse groups of people at Harvard to achieve integration and better race relations. And the danger to be avoided is the possibility of the Foundation coming to fit Random House's eighth meaning of the word "foundation"--"a cosmetic, used as a base for ... make-up."