To the Editors of The Crimson:

The Crimson articles on racial "diversity" by Ira Stoll and Joanna Weiss and the subsequent editorials regarding the work of the Harvard Foundation for Race Relations beg a response. Because we have a revolving student body that may be misled by the misinformation in the editorials and earlier articles by the Crimson groups, and faculty who may be led to believe that the views expressed in the articles represent the student consensus, we at the Harvard Foundation must set the record straight.

We had hoped that the Crimson group would take advantage of its opportunity to do a fair and balanced report on the attitudes of Harvard's racially diverse student community. Unfortunately, its editorials and articles on race fall short in the areas of accuracy, objectivity and fairness.

First, The Crimson's recent editorials and series of articles on race relations were grossly unfair to the Harvard Foundation and Hilda Hernandez-Gravelle. The Harvard Foundation's 10-year record of improving racial understanding at Harvard and the inclusion of minorities in the life of the University speaks for itself and is available to any student or faculty member who wishes to visit our office in University Hall.

In keeping with our mandate, we have conducted hundreds of programs and projects which serve to further enlighten the Harvard community about aspects of race and race-relations, and which have arguably improved racial understanding on our campus.

These programs range form lecture-visits and student-discussion/meetings with such Foundation guests as United Nations Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, author James Baldwin, Cherokee Chief Wilma Mankiller, Governor of Puerto Rico Raphael Hernandez-Colon, National Science Foundation Head Walter Massey, Northern Ireland leader John Hume, Berkeley Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien, U.S. Surgeon General Antonia Novello, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, scholar-athlete Arthur Ashe (to name a few), to panel discussions, films and debates on every conceivable aspect of race relations.

During the 1991-92 academic year alone, we have sponsored over 90 student programs and an all-Ivy conference on race relations. We have also conducted minority leadership workshops, inter-ethnic retreats and dinners and each year we present the Harvard Foundation Award to the students of all races whom the deans and house masters and professors have nominated for their Outstanding contribution to Race Relations at Harvard.

We even run a feature article on each of the student recipients of this award in his/her home-town newspaper (and their families and communities have been made to "feel good" and proud of their students.)

The director and students, of the Harvard Foundation have also successfully petitioned the deans of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences [FAS] for several new Ethnic Studies courses in the curriculum (including Puerto Rico in the Twentieth Century, Asian-American Culture and history and Chicano Politics). In an effort to help increase the number of minority faculty of Puerto Rican, Mexican-American, Asian-American, African-American and Native American Indian backgrounds, the students and faculty of the Harvard Foundation have collected the resumes of dozens of professors across the nation, presented them to the Faculty and secured the appointment of numerous minority visiting faculty.

In the 1991 fall semester for example, the Foundation was responsible for the course entitled "Latino Political Behavior," taught in the Government Department by visiting professor Rudolfo de la Garza; "Religious Traditions of the Southwest" (focusing on Native American Indian religion), taught in the Divinity School by visiting professor Inez Talamantez; and "Fiction by American Women of Color," taught in the English Department by visiting professor King Kok Cheung. The foundation has been responsible for numerous other visiting professors over the past years.

Both faculty and students have continually expressed their satisfaction and pleasure with the quality of the Foundation's programs and the success of our efforts to bring our students of different races and cultural backgrounds together in mutual understanding and respect. That is our mission, and we are proud to say that no one dies it better. We are not perfect, but we do our job. And if we make our students of all races "fell good" about race relations at Harvard in the process, then our efforts are successful.

According to former President Derek Bok, "We have been saved much of the hostile racerelations climate reported on other University campuses largely because of the work of the Harvard Foundation.

The Harvard Foundation was established in the spring of 1981 by the president, deans and Faculty of the University for the purpose of improving race relations among Harvard's increasingly diverse student population. Its formation followed widespread expressions of dissatisfaction among mainly Black, Puerto Rican and Native American Indian students about their treatment at Harvard.

Many of these students asked the University for a separate "third world" race center similar to the Hillel center where they could seek refuge form what they deemed "the racism and insensitivity of some of the white other nonminority members of the Harvard community." The alternative and special structure of the Harvard Foundation was recommended by a student/Faculty Committee that had investigated race relations problems and solutions on other Ivy League and Public college campuses.

While the initial focus of the Foundation's mandate was race, the director recommended the expansion of its name and programs to include the word, "culture," in an effort to reach out to white students and other non-minorities of color. The Harvard Foundation remains today unique in its structure and programs in that it serves those groups that are identified as racial minorities as well as white students, and no group has to feel excluded or underserved.