And Harvard cannot compromise its academic standards by hiring professors who are not properly qualified, as some less prestigious universities are now considering.

Other universities have also adopted policies that set fixed, numerical goals for minority presence on their faculties. Since the number of eligible candidates is so small, such policies will inevitably lead to the degradation of academic standards. One hopes that Harvard would never dream of adopting such a policy.

The shortage of minority Ph.D.'s coupled with the tremendous demand. has led to cut-throat bidding wars. Universities often obtain minority professors after great efforts, only to have them snatched away by rivals offering a better deal.

This sort of ruthless competition between universities is nothing new; certainly Harvard is very adept at grabbing prestigious professors from other institutions.

But now, minority professors are valued not for their academic achievements but for their ethnicities. They become valuable only as representatives of their culture serving primarily as "role models," rather than as experts in various academic discipline. Labelling academics as "minorities" and seeking to hire them on that basis demeans their intellectual achievement, which, after all, should be the reason they are being hired in the first place.

Increasing diversity in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, like increasing the diversity of the student body, is a laudable goal. But minority professors are scarce, and those who have what it takes to be Harvard professors are even scarcer.

The only way to increase faculty diversity, without compromising academic excellence, is to enable and encourage qualified minority students to pursue academic careers. No amount of protesting will successfully increase faculty diversity until we recognize this basic need.