President Neil L. Rudenstine released his annual report for 1993-1995 on "Diversity and Learning" to the Board of Overseers this weekend, reflecting a far more historical approach than any presidential report in recent memory.

The report is, in many senses, a work of scholarship. It unites such diverse sources as the works of John Stuart Mill, the autobiography of Henry Adams, reports of former Harvard presidents and decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court to make the case for the importance of diversity in higher education.

While many presidents have used annual reports in the past as a forum for bold, even revolutionary, new ideas, Rudenstine's report affirms in its introduction that it intends to show that Harvard's "existing policies continue to offer the most effective and promising pathway to the future."

Why Diversity?

Rudenstine said in an interview Friday that he decided to study diversity out of both personal interest and the belief that it is a necessary component of education.

Rudenstine also said that recent national debate on affirmative action has made diversity on college campuses a hot issue. In particular, some scholars and politicians have questioned the admissions practices universities such as Harvard use to achieve diverse campuses.

The key to Harvard's success in constructing classes that are both talented and diverse stems from the fundamental duality of the admissions process, Rudenstine says.

While many schools have relied more and more on objective criteria like test scores and high school grades, Harvard continues to consider the subtler merits of its applicants, such as their ability to benefit from and contribute to the undergraduate experience.

"Admissions decisions are not isolated, atomistic events," Rudenstine says in his report. "They focus on individuals, but each decision is made in the context of others, where the pattern of the whole is also taken into account."

Problems of Diversity

Despite the longstanding tradition of placing value on diversity in education, Rudenstine acknowledges a number of difficulties that arise in the process of bringing together students of suitably different backgrounds.

One of the pitfalls of affirmative action in admissions has been the use of a quota system by which lesser-qualified minority applicants are allotted a certain number of places in a class.

Rudenstine chronicles the most famous such case, the 1978 Regents of the University of California vs. Bakke, in which a rejected white applicant challenged the university's system of fixed quotas and separate admissions standards for minority applicants.

The court ruled that the system was unconstitutional but explicitly commended systems like Harvard's that attempt to create diversity without resorting to quotas.

Still, Rudenstine acknowledges, Harvard's system leaves a number of questions.

Rudenstine quoted from the concurring opinion in Bakke of then-Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun '29: "The cynical, of course, may say that under a program such as Harvard's one may accomplish covertly what Davis concedes it does openly."