"It's frustrating--people don't realize howintimidating it can be to be the only one, to feelthat you just can't blend in," says the GSDassistant dean. "Yes I am an administrator, butno, I'm a Black administrator--and that's real."

This insistence on his racial identity isconnected to Watson's activities as an educator,an administrator and a social activist. ForWatson, the decision to take on the cause ofaffirmative action at Harvard was, he says, an"inevitable" one, stemming from years of combinedexperience in both his personal and professionallives.

When asked why he has committed himself to acause that, at Harvard certainly, ensures afrustrating--and often unproductive--battle,Watson replies simply, "I had to."

"You see," he narrates, in a straight-forwardbut dramatic tone, "I was a victim of the New YorkCity public schools." Growing up in theBedford-Stuyvestant section of Brooklyn, Watsonwas the son of "very hard-working blue-collarworkers." His mother worked in a Kosher bakery,his father was a truck driver.

The family placed a high priority on education,according to Watson. But the school authorities inBrooklyn didn't assign an equally high value toWatson's education, he says. Classified aslearning disabled in elementary school for noparticular reason, Watson continued his career inthe public schools during the height of the BlackPower movement and the urban riots of the late1960s.

Outrage and Action

One experience he recounts from the period wasformative in molding his commitment to opening upeducational opportunities to Blacks. New YorkUniversity spent eight months filming adocumentary about Watson's school, and the nightit was released, "I'll never forget how I cried,"he says. The reason: "The entire movie was justhorrendous--it just basically said that there wasno talent [at his school], none at all."

And Watson's response: He "stormed" into theprincipal's office and complained about the movieand its portrayal of his fellow students.

It is this pattern of outrage and action whichWatson has replayed again and again. As anundergraduate at the State University of New Yorkat Oswego. As a graduate student in Black studiesat Cornell. As an administrator at Harvard.

But Watson says he has not had a choice inpursuing his activist course, despite thefrustrations he has encountered. "When you'retagged, you're it--that's what a minister oncetold me. It's something I could not refuse to do.