Diversity at Harvard: A Struggle Beneath the Surface

This week, The Crimson will publish a four-part feature series examining issues of diversity at Harvard, the product of a two-month study. Today's segment provides an introduction to questions of diversity in theory and in practice.

"Diversity is the hallmark of the Harvard-Radcliffe experience."

So reads the opening page of the University admissions catalogue. It is probably the first time a prospective student is presented with the association between "Harvard" and "diversity." It certainly isn't the last.

Concentrations, hometowns, interests--"diversity" is used to describe all sorts of differences. But in daily Harvard discourse, "diversity" almost always refers to groups considered different because of ethnicity, race or sexual orientation.

For hundreds of years, Harvard was a relatively homogeneous institution, catering to the rich, the white and the Protestant. When we speak of "difference" we traditionally think of differences between minority groups and that historical majority.

But in a community that has come to include people of many cultural, racial and ethnic backgrounds, it is perhaps too simplistic to speak of "minorities" only in terms of that contrast. Those who might typically be labeled "minorities" within the Harvard community may define themselves in countless ways.

Some feel comfortable identifying with well-recognized "minority groups." Others develop uniquely personal ways to define their niche within a community of difference. Still others reject labels altogether and speak of their identity only in terms of ideas and interests.

But many--including the Harvard Admissions Office--agree that diversity of cultural, ethnic and racial backgrounds often means a diversity of past experience. And "minority" classifications can be an admittedly blunt but useful tool in making sense of that diversity of experience.

By that definition, few would deny that Harvard has achieved a fair amount of diversity. More than 35 percent of the class of 1995 belongs to a racial minority group--a number far higher than the proportion of racial minorities in the American population. And the numbers keep getting bigger. Since the class of 1991 was admitted, the minority representation among first-years has increased by five percentage points.

To the outsider, Harvard's campus may appear the model of a diverse community. Taped to every kiosk, it seems, are posters advertising ethnic groups' activities or race-related forums. A snapshot of the Yard on a weekday afternoon, afternoon, Sanders Theatre during a Social Analysis 10 lecture, or Tommy's Lunch on a Friday night would be a sociologist's dream: Black, white, Puerto Rican, Chinese-American, Korean-American and Mexican-American students working and playing together in an intellectual environment.

Harvard is often cited as a model of diversity. But when you scratch the surface, what lies underneath?

But closer scrutiny reveals that just below the surface are oft-unspoken tensions and insecurities--the by-products of Harvard's much-touted model of diversity.

Many of these tensions can be traced, not just to conflicts between different groups, but to competing sentiments within each student.

The individual on campus is one of 6400, faced with a mass of choices--choices of friends, roommates, houses, courses and activities. Those decisions would be daunting in a homogeneous society. Toss in diversity, and they're that much harder to make.

Richard S. Park, a junior who is Korean-American, was once active in Koreans at Harvard and Radcliffe (KOHR). But he no longer goes to KOHR events. Park says he didn't feel comfortable in a group he considered closed-off from the rest of the community. And, he says, he didn't want to lose his sense of individuality.

"With other Koreans, we had so many similarities that I really wasn't as different anymore," Park says. "I was one person in a group."

The positive side to his decision, Park says, is an abundance of acquaintances from different racial and ethnic backgrounds--acquaintances he would never have made had he surrounded himself solely with Koreans.

But Park says his decision also left him without a clearly-defined circle of friends. Because of the loneliness he feels, Park is now pledging a fraternity, hoping to create a tight group that he feels he lacks.

"Because I choose not to hang out with other Koreans, and because so many of my friends are different from me and have different activities and stuff, I realize that I feel this sense of alienation," Park says. "This is an unfortunate side-effect of diversity, that many people feel this way, too."

Park faced a tough balancing act--risking loneliness and alienation, or shielding himself within a group that, in his opinion, did not interact enough with others on campus.

Some students, like Park, consider campus ethnic groups unnecessarily isolated from the rest of the community. In dining halls and rooming groups, students often separate themselves along racial lines that are easily identifiable.

And regardless of who chooses to sit with whom--and who chooses not to sit with whom--that separation can be highly visible. The tension it creates is often palpable.

Many students agree that a diverse community is an asset, rather than a liability. But diversity alone, they say, is incomplete.

"I don't think diversity itself is the goal," says Nicholas C. Weinstock '91-'92, co-chair of Actively Working Against Racism and Ethnocentrism (AWARE). "Diversity isn't so much an issue as what's done with diversity--how the diverse groups act with each other."

Although the campus has a number of ethnically oriented clubs, the amount of communication between them is surprisingly limited. Even when ethnic groups join together for a common purpose, the collaboration sometimes goes awry.

For instance, when members of several minority groups planned a protest of European oppression on Columbus Day this year, Native Americans at Harvard Co-President Joseph W. Secondine '92 didn't learn about it until he walked past demonstrators at the John Harvard statue.

"It was kind of weird, because I hadn't heard about it before," Secondine says.

Minority groups on campus may appear at odds, some students say, because often they are at odds.

"Minority organizations are in a sense competing for the attention of the average white Harvard student," Weinstock said at an October meeting of the Minority Students Alliance (MSA). He said there is "so much energy that's wasted by sort of elbowing each other out."

But many minority students say that a series of events last spring proved that different ethnic groups could work well together.

When Bridget L. Kerrigan '91 hung a Confederate flag from her Kirkland House window, and when Jacinda T. Townsend '92 responded by hanging a swastika in her own window, the Black Students Association (BSA) and Hillel worked together to formulate an organized response.

And although the situation was represented in the national media as a racial meltdown at Harvard, many say the BSA-Hillel coalition served as a positive example of race relations gone right.

The question remains, though, whether these cooperative sentiments can be sustained. Was last year's incident the exception or the rule?

Some, like Natosha O. Reid '93, see it as the exception.

"I'd like to see a lot more interaction between the groups other than just the fact that we're here," Reid says. "I don't see a true interaction or alliance of different racial groups on campus."

"This whole sort of melting pot thing is an idea," says Tamara D. Duckworth '91-'92. "I think the diversity thing is an experiment, and we're not sure if it's going to work yet. We still have to come to terms with what it means in the country as a whole."

We learned in elementary school that the United States is a "melting pot," and that America is a place where people of different colors and backgrounds come to live and work together.

But many sociologists today say that the goal of American society should be to achieve, not a melting pot, but a "salad bowl," in which each individual component retains its own shape and identity, but contributes to the total flavor of the composite.

The danger, though, is that society may turn out to be more like a "salad bar," in which each ingredient is separated by nearly impenetrable barriers and an out-of-place vegetable sticks out like a sore thumb--or a white student at an Asian American Association meeting.

Harvard, most would agree, has not become a nightmarish "salad bar." But just because Harvard is not stricken by cross burnings or Bensonhurst-style murders does not mean that the University's unique brand of diversity is without flaw.

"One of the comments we get all the time is that there aren't any problems at Harvard," Weinstock says. "Nine out of 10 times that's said, it's said by a white student."

Many students say they sense that tension in racially divided dining hall tables, and in students' attitudes towards issues such as interracial dating.

And the situation, some say, has the potential to worsen.

Admissions Officer David L. Evans thinks that, in troubled economic times, when cries of "reverse discrimination" abound, we should be aware that diversity can have some serious repercussions.

"The civil rights movement succeeded in a time when the economy was expanding," Evans says. "Right now, in a tightening economy, everyone is paranoid."

As national attention focuses on racial paranoia, why should we be worried about relatively enlightened Harvard? Weinstock thinks that, with a problem of such magnitude, Harvard may be the perfect place to start.

"Instead of glossing over the problems and covering them up," he says, "we should concentrate our efforts on working at those problems, so that we will be better educated and better able to deal with those problems once we get outside."

We live in a diverse community--a community that, in each year's admissions process, is consciously engineered as a mix of racial and ethnic groups.

Harvard officials say such a diverse community is intended to enhance the potential for learning on campus. At the same time students begin to associate "Harvard" with "diversity," they are told that they will learn more from the people around us than they ever will learn in the classroom.

Even the most stalwart defenders of Harvard's model of diversity agree that learning can only take place in the presence of communication and interaction. If those ideals are not fully met, then--if they believe the standard Harvard rhetoric--students here must ask whether they are getting the right education.Crimson PhotoHaibin Jiu