Tommy Amaker accepted an offer to lead the Crimson’s men’s basketball team, Harvard said yesterday, making him the only African American among its 32 head coaches.

Just hours before the announcement, Nichols Family Director of Athletics Robert L. Scalise countered widespread criticism of the lack of diversity in the upper ranks of the Crimson’s coaching staffs. At a gathering hosted by the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations, Scalise stressed the difficulty of hiring minority coaches.

Scalise said it was particularly hard to foster diversity in sports such as alpine and nordic skiing, field hockey, and women’s lacrosse—sports he described as “white middle-class suburban.”

“We contact the Black Coaches Association on every search we do,” he said. “But some of the positions were kind of strained.”

He said the key to fostering diversity within coaching staffs is doing the same among athletes themselves.

“We’re trying to branch out and increase the pool of people who play the sports,” Scalise said.

The event was held before the Athletics Department announced it was naming Amaker. Scalise, who chaired the committee charged with selecting the new coach, said his department was “on the verge of hopefully making an announcement that will hopefully improve our athletics.”

“You have the opportunity once every 10 or 15 years to make the right hiring choice,” Scalise said. “Just know that we’re trying to make some progress and do the right thing.”

During the discussion, Scalise was criticized by S. Allen Counter, the director of the Harvard Foundation.

Counter said he had been contacted by the Boston Globe for an article about the lack of diversity among Harvard’s coaches, but declined to comment.

“Had I given comments, I might have said that five years ago at a meeting of the deans, I posed the same question,” Counter said. “During my 35 years at Harvard, we have had a black coach in athletics, because our president, Derek Bok, made an effort. All of a sudden we’ve gone back in time.”

Scalise responded that many of Harvard’s coaching positions haven’t seen much turnover, restricting the department’s ability to make changes.

He repeatedly emphasized that other factors shouldn’t be sacrificed for diversity’s sake.

“I want to hire the best person for the job,” Scalise said. “You should know that I’m going to look broadly for all types of candidates. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the best person for the job were actually a minority candidate?”

The co-chair of the Foundation’s Student Advisory Committee, Layusa Isa-Odidi ’09, said that the Globe’s coverage of the issue prompted extending the invitation to Scalise.

“We wanted to speak to a person with senior power who could explain to us the hiring process,” Isa-Odidi said. “We’d like to see in the future a move towards an athletic department that is reflective of the diversity that exists at Harvard, not just for African Americans, but for minorities in general.”

—Staff writer Malcom A. Glenn can be reached at mglenn@fas.harvard.edu.