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Harvard Still Short Of Diversity Goals

News Feature

"I think we should find ways to reward those offices and those units that have done a good job in furthering those goals," he says.

According to this year's report, Harvard schools vary dramatically, both in their progress toward the faculty hiring goals and their strategies toward implementing those goals.

"I think it would defy logic not to find there to be some variance in commitments," says Hoyte. "My sense is the overwhelming majority are very committed to having a more diverse faculty.

And some say this commitment has been hardened in recent years because of vigorous student campaigns to increase faculty diversity.

After several years of protests, which culminated in the occupation of University Hall in 1990, the University tenured DuBois Professor of the Humanities and Afro-American Studies Department Chair Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Professor of Afro-American Studies K. Anthony Appiah.

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Hoyte acknowledges the role of students in the University's affirmative action efforts. "One way [of forcing action] certainly has to do with public pressure, embarrassment if you will," says Hoyte.

This year the College has seen the creation of a Coalition for Diversity, composed of undergraduates pressing for more minority faculty, while the Law and Kennedy Schools last year saw a series of protests on the issue.

The Law School was earlier sued by students because of the dearth of minorities and women in its faculty, and Weld Professor of Law Derrick A. Bell resigned over the faculty's failure to hire a woman of color to a tenured post.

A Success Story

Over the period of the five-year plan, which was extended to six years to include 1993 because of Hoyte's recent arrival, only one school at the University--the School of Public Health--has met its goals to increase diversity among faculty according to the University Affirmative Action Plan.

Though Hoyte says the University must fulfill these aims before going further, other say the goals should not be the limit of Harvard's ambitions in this area.

"Certainly ten percent is not the kind of goal we should be happy with," says Assistant Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences for Academic Planning Joseph J. McCarthy.

Ann R. Oliver, associate dean for academic affairs at the School of Public Health, says her school is able to hire significant percentages of minority and women faculty members because their faculty searches include extensive research into the availability of women and minorities.

"The chair of each search committee talks to people in that specific field to identify eligible minorities and women," she says.

Oliver credits the school's post-doctoral fellowship program, which brings minority fellows to the campus to work with senior Harvard professors, for helping the school and the candidates become familiar with one another.

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