Kenan Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield ’53 said that his colleagues had presented no proof that a problem exists because they had not shown that discrimination against women exists.

He said the only diversity issue that affects female faculty is the absence of conservative women.

“Try to find a conservative professor at the Radcliffe Institute,” he said.

“I’m amazed but in a sense not even surprised” at the discussion, he added.

Barbara Gross, the Radcliffe science dean, responded by saying that while overt discrimination is not occurring, “our implicit biases” have lead to the dearth of offers to women.

In other business, Pforzheimer University Professor Sidney Verba ’53 formally announced Harvard’s plan, in conjunction with Google, to digitally scan and place online 40,000 books, with a view to eventually placing almost all of Harvard’s 15 million volumes online.

Yesterday’s meeting also inaugurated a procedural change designed to free up more time for substantive discussion. Two “memorial minutes,” which are read at the beginning of each meeting to commemorative the lives of deceased professors and which usually run about 10 minutes each, will now only be read in an abridged, two-minute-long form.

—Staff writer Laura L. Krug contributed to the reporting of this article.

—Staff writer William C. Marra can be reached at wmarra@fas.harvard.edu.