Our Traditions

June 4, 1981



Ah, tradition! Old men return to the Yard, in the shadow of Widener Library and Memorial Church, to welcome the young to the company of the educated. Commencement is a beautiful day, even when it rains, for it represents the continuity and the renewal that comes with each new generation.

Ah, tradition! For hundreds of years there have been few or no women or minorities on Harvard’s faculties, and the situation is not changing quickly. Since its inception, Harvard has hosted homosexual students, but never officially promised them that the University will be a refuge from discrimination.

The heritage of Harvard is its greatest strength, but also one of its mightiest flaws. The past year has shown once more that the University can use the resource of its great past in two ways—to uphold the values that should always exist here, or to nourish the forces of reaction and conservatism that have sometimes triumphed.

In the early winter, when President Bok decided that Harvard would not enter as a commercial competitor in the booming field of genetic engineering, he appealed to some time-honored precepts. Learning should be an end in itself, not a way to earn vast fortunes. Teachers should be teaching, searching, thinking, and not competing with each other for profit and fame. In a world as brim full of the commercial and the exploitative as ours, Harvard should serve as a sanctuary of something higher. And though we are not convinced these were the only reasons for rejecting the commercial enterprise, we applaud his decision.

We don’t, however, jump to our feet in clamorous ovation. There are too many other decisions that show the other side of Harvard’s heritage. Though it has eschewed participation in a DNA company, Harvard continues, for example, to maintain a real estate firm which, in its dealings with its tenants and the city, uses none of the delicacy Harvard applied to questions of genes and chromosomes. As an example, this winter saw the end of a two-year-long drama with the departure of tenants from 7 Sumner Rd. The last few residents finally gave up their legal battle and departed, weary of fighting for their homes against a University that was willing to pour thousands of dollars and thousands of hours of legal talent into evicting them. Many Harvard employees, angry at anti-union campaigns, have complained as well.

The seed Harvard has planted with its tenants is starting to bear fruit; a month ago, they began to band together in a Harvard tenant union to complain about abuses and demand fairer treatment. And there are some signs their tactics will work—the most hopeful proof is the experience of the city government in recent months. For generations Harvard ignored the city problems, including those to which they contribute; this year, though, the city won the right to regulate University expansion. And with that power came new leverage. Cambridge has been able to force Harvard to the bargaining table on some issues, and the University has come voluntarily on others. The negotiations have proved that differences can be hammered out and compromises reached.

There are a host of other problems that show the University is still bound by the not-so-glorious burdens of its past. Affirmative action wins verbal praise from the University, but most of the women who go to the Faculty Club are still guests. Theda Skocpol, an award-winning sociologist, was turned down for tenure here; she filed a grievance, a three-member panel heard her case, and then ruled that indeed there was evidence of gender discrimination. Others have suggested prejudice against junior faculty and intellectual bias played parts in the denial of tenure. Now it’s up to Harvard, and for once the University must respond with actions and not words. Skocpol and more like her deserve places on the Faculty, both because they are great scholars and teachers and because any faculty without minorities or women is handicapped in the view of the world it receives and transmits to its students.

Perhaps the greatest recent example of absurd University intransigience was its refusal last month to adopt a code explicitly promising not to discriminate against gay students. The Faculty Council was unable to find evidence of discrimination. What the Council did do was inform a large—and repeatedly harrassed—segment of the University population that the administration is unconcerned about their situation. In much the same way, Harvard has not taken the concrete steps it should to begin to solve the problems of race relations on campus.

But it’s not simply oversight that prompts administration neglect of these issues. It’s fear, mostly of alumni. The men who run this University think those who went there in years past and who now provide its financial support will react with alarm should they become enlightened and allow too many female professors, or give too much support to the portion of their students that are gay, or end their policy of supporting apartheid through investments. In a sense, then, alumni are already putting on pressure, and Harvard is already conforming to what it perceives as their wishes.

You—alumni of years past, and those that will become alumni after today’s ceremonies—have a great opportunity. Continue to apply pressure, but make it overt and conspicuous, like the pressure recently and effectively applied by the city government. And make it on the side of human rights and basic liberties. Write Harvard and explain to them that there’ll be no donations from you until it is clear the money will not be invested in companies or banks that do business with South Africa. Write Harvard and explain that, as women students, you felt cheated by the shortage of women professors, and that you will contribute to the University only when the situation is alleviated. Write Harvard and tell them that you think gay students deserve the same assurances as any other vulnerable minority, and that your money will stay in the bank or be given to some other worthy cause until those assurances are made. Write to Harvard and say you love this school and its history, but that you would love it more could it shrug off the legacy of neglect for others that colors its actions. Write Harvard and ask that it begin to feel some real sense of responsibility for its actions—on campus, in Cambridge and the nation, and around the world.