As the Class of 1980 readied for graduation, the College released a 150-page report examining undergraduate race relations. Issued shortly before the Miami, Fla. race riots broke out, the report concluded that in spite of improvements, prejudices among students still existed.

Two years in the making, the report also encouraged the College to step up its efforts in recruiting minority faculty and students—a recommendation that came at a time when the Department of Afro-American Studies was widely identified as a trouble spot.

Today, Harvard’s campus continues to debate these issues of minority recruitment and race relations—in House dining halls, in classrooms, during official forums, and in University Hall.

MINORITY REPORT

The Spring 1977 cover of the Lampoon featured a drawing of a black person shining the shoes of the John Harvard statue, the Crimson reported in February 1977.

The Harvard-Radcliffe Black Students Association (BSA) called this and other caricatures “racially insensitive.”

On the heels of these complaints, then-Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III formed a 16-member committee of students, faculty members, and administrators.

The Committee on Race Relations aimed to determine how Harvard would shape students’ racial perceptions, examine the pattern of interaction among white and minority students, and issue recommendations to improve race relations at the College.

To guide their efforts, the committee led a series of focus groups and administered an exhaustive, 251-question survey that elicited responses from about 1,300 students, or roughly 22 percent of undergraduates.

“We were trying to make a real assessment of what race relations was like in Harvard in the late ’70s,” says committee member T. Jake Liang ’80. “The committee tried to assess how much progress we had made and what issues we still had to address.”

The report indicated that distorted perceptions—not separatism—were responsible for problems with race at Harvard.

It concluded that one out of every five students questioned the academic abilities of minorities, that many undergraduates doubted the College’s commitment to affirmative action, and that students perceived more students to be prejudiced than faculty or staff.

But committee member Eugene A. Matthews ’80 describes the racial problems of 1980 as the result of self-segregation rather than overt racial tensions.

“Every individual was different, but a lot of people in the Freshman Union would sit in the springtime with their own ethnic group,” Matthews recalls. “There was no tension on campus, nor was there any preventative collaboration between races. I’ve never heard of any racial problem or any physical violence based on that respect.”

Along with its findings, the Committee on Race Relations also issued 13 recommendations, suggesting that courses on race relations be incorporated into the Core Curriculum and that affirmative action admissions be increased.