The third and most important shortcoming in Rudenstine's report is the total omission of the administration's troubled relationship with minority students over the past 20 years. Any claim that diversity is crucial to educational excellence is meaningless if diversity is not supported by legitimate and adequately supported structures, open-minded administrators and a commitment to tolerance and interaction among students of different backgrounds. Disturbingly, Rudenstine declines to mention some of the most momentous concerns that minority students have repeatedly voiced since the 1970s, including:

* The continued lack of a consistent administrative policy with regard to complaints of racial harassment. Over the years, the Dean of Students, the Dean of the College, the Harvard Police Department, House Masters, the Office of Race Relations and Minority Affairs, the Administrative Board and the Bureau of Study Counsel have overlapped and even worked at cross-purposes in dealing with student grievances.

* The persistent refusal to provide a minority resource center for student groups to make books and other resources available for all students.

* The glacial inertia against which Harvard has tenured a handful of minority and women faculty--this, despite the fact that the 1980 Dean Whitla Report admitted that Harvard practiced "at best, passive recruitment" of people of color.

* The near total absence of minorities in the upper echelons of the central administration and of the schools, and the underrepresentation of minorities among the University officials who have close interaction with students.

* The waffling, delays and sheer resistance to the offering of more courses--not a department, not a concentration, just more courses--in the field of race and ethnic studies.

These flaws are not meant as a laundry list of complaints. Rather, they are a real chronology of the serious challenges facing "diversity and learning" at Harvard -- challenges that the university, and its president, must own up to if diversity is to be more than a superficial catchphrase.

Mansfield's comments on diversity are easy to attack, but Rudenstine's report is dangerous, in a distinct and subtle way. Through its omissions, the report succeeds in painting a superficial and ultimately dishonest picture of diversity at Harvard, one that admirably draws out the theoretical implications of diversity without looking at the real ways in which it is practiced. "Diversity and Learning" is a failure -- but not for the reasons cited by Mansfield. It is a failure because of its incompleteness.

Mansfield certainly deserves condemnation; but Rudenstine should not be allowed to escape a profound skepticism over the sincerity and consistency of the University's ostensible commitment to diversity. It is fair for Harvard students to hold their president to a high standard. It is fair for them to expect a certain level of candor and introspection when what is arguably America's top university issues so public a statement. It is fair to expect that Rudenstine, an English professor, be more probing and more honest than the glossy admissions and fundraising brochures the university produces in such high quantities. It is fair to expect that the president discuss not only diversity's theoretical value but the actual challenges a university faces in making it a meaningful and real component of student life. It is fine to expound on the intellectual implications of diversity in higher education, but without a corresponding commitment to promoting diversity after admission, this becomes an empty rhetorical exercise.

Affairs at Harvard, and in American civic life, have been increasingly pervaded with apathy in the past 30 years. If our public leaders, in the academy and in government, refuse to engage in the difficult yet necessary work of honest self-assessment, then concepts like "diversity" will only exist as shallow mantras, and cynicism in public life can only continue to grow.

Sewell Chan '98 is co-chair-elect of the Academic Affairs Committee of the Harvard Foundation and is co-president of the Asian American Association.