Black Students at Harvard: The Rosovsky Report

(The following are excerpts from the text of the report of the Rosovsky Committee on African and Afro-American Studies, a Faculty committee of nine members appointed last April by Dean Ford, and chaired by Henry Rosovsky, professor of Economics. The report is virtually complete with the exception of the section on African studies.)

The "quality of black student life at Harvard" is obviously difficult to define and assess. It would be presumptuous of any committee, even one including black students or one which has listened carefully to the testimony of many black students, to declare what the "quality" of that life actually is. However, it is at least possible to determine something of the frustrations, and the hopes, experienced and expressed by black students, and, on the basis of such information, recommend certain specific courses of action which should be taken by various elements of the University in order to make the Harvard experience a more satisfactory one for the black student.

Before entering on our findings and recommendations it might be well to stress our belief that the attitudes of black students with respect to the University are by no means wholly dissimilar from those of other students. Black students feel alienated from, even neglected within, Harvard; but so, as we know, do many whites. Black students seek and expect "relevance" from their Harvard education, but obviously they are not alone, at this time, in voicing such an expectation. However, the black experience is not simply a mode of the general student experience; it is different, and not merely in degree of intensity, from that of Harvard's white students.

The similarities emerge clearly and immediately from a listing of the four areas with which black students showed the greatest concern:

(1) course offerings and other educational opportunities at Harvard;

(2) the forms and quality of undergraduate social and cultural life;

(3) the relationship between undergraduates and graduate students, and between students and the Faculty and Administration;

(4) the University's relationship to the community.

Each of these four areas has been the subject of concern and discourse within the student body generally. But, equally clearly, the dissatisfaction of black students, with respect to each area, has a special, even unique character of its own.

Although each of these subjects can be discussed separately and in its turn, and although this report does so for reasons of clarity, and emphasis, it must be stressed that they are interrelated. Clearly they are related in the minds of the affected black students, but they are substantively related as well. These interrelationships are particularly evident in those portions of this report that recommend specific action. Each recommendation will, when implemented, have an effect in more than one area of concern. Indeed, even in those cases where no specific recommendation can be offered, an awareness of the range and implications of the problems will help to define the nature of the action to be taken in other areas.

The Curriculum

The seamlessness of the problem is especially clear with respect to the Harvard curriculum. The absence of course offerings in many areas of Afro-American culture is emphatically a matter of more than academic or pedagogical concern to black students. Indeed, it seems likely that the absence of such offerings is the single most potent source of the black students' discontent at Harvard. The lack of such courses can strike the black students as a negative judgment by Harvard University on the importance of these areas of knowledge and research, and, by inference, on the importance of the black people themselves.

More pointedly, there is the problem faced by the black students, who, coming to Harvard, may feel more or less consciously something of a dislocation from the black community. Many students who addressed the committee expressed the need to legitimize, inwardly as well as publicly, their presence at Harvard while other blacks remain in the ghetto, confronting its problems, bearing its burdens. Herein lies one of the major sources of the demand for courses "relevant" to the black experience.

What the black student wants is an opportunity to study the black experience and to employ the intellectual resources of Harvard in seeking solutions to the problems of the black community--so that he will be better prepared to assist the community in solving these problems. Such educational opportunities at Harvard would help the black student to justify his separation from the larger black community--and would attest that the separation was by no means radical or permanent.

The augmentation of Harvard's course offerings and the development of a new program in Afro-American studies (see Section II), are viewed by the black students as the essential means of ameliorating the situation. However, the full development of such resources will take time, and meanwhile there are specific problems for which immediate solutions seem available.

For instance, there is much that might be done to enrich the opportunities available through the less formal academic activities of the crucial freshman year. The reading lists provided freshman as the basis for discussion groups during "orientation week" should provide black students greater opportunity to elect to read and discuss books that bear more directly on areas in which they are interested. A special effort should also be made to enrich the Freshman Seminar offerings. There is precedent for these seminars being taught by instructors with no other Harvard teaching appointment, and we recommend that some Freshman Seminars be taught by experts and qualified persons available only elsewhere in the Cambridge/Boston area or brought to Harvard for the specific purpose of teaching Freshman Seminars.

Other steps should be taken to provide greater flexibility in the programs of students once they have entered on a field of concentration. Black students feel that their proposals for tutorial work, or for independent study, are too often discouraged by the present Departments and degree-awarding Committees. Social Relations was singled out by students as being generally quite receptive to such proposals, but even this field, broad and tolerant as it is, has on occasion proven unable to encompass and serve what black students consider their legitimate intellectual needs.

The students feel that there are areas in which they have experience and information that could not possibly be available to any white member of the Faculty. Lack of Faculty "expertise" ought not be a reason for discouraging students' work in such areas; rather, instructors should provide, at a minimum, appropriate professional guidance--bibliographical and methodological assistance--for those students who wish to pursue investigations in areas where no "expert" is presently available. Where black students have such special expertise, the Faculty should be encouraged to avail themselves of these resources.

Although such steps can and ought to be taken immediately, there is no long-range solution to the academic frustrations of black students short of the addition to the Harvard Faculty of persons qualified to teach in areas of interest to black students, and of the development of a pattern of instruction in these areas. On the other hand, however essential the enrichment of Harvard's course offerings, the augmentation of its Faculty, and the creation of a formal structure for the teaching and study of Afro-American studies, there are steps that can and ought to be taken by the present Departments and Committees:

We recommend that the existing fields of concentration reconsider their present procedures of approving research projects, and of granting concentration credit, in an awareness of the difficulties experienced by students in developing Afro-American study projects. It might be appropriate, for instance, for Departments to offer undergraduate pro-seminars for academic coordination of field-study and work-study projects, or other relevant community work, of several students. Each Department ought also make a survey of its teaching resources, and the interests of its teaching faculties, so that students would be able to find Faculty members prepared to direct and supervise unusual projects. Moreover, there should be some means whereby students in one Department can be made aware of the resources of others, and whereby tutorial in Government, for instance, can in appropriate cases be directed by a member of the History or Social Relations Department.

We recommend that information concerning the teaching resources of Harvard in these areas be fully publicized. We further propose that a directory be prepared of Boston-area faculty members who have special knowledge and expertise concerning Afro-American affairs who are willing to conduct independent studies (arranged through Harvard fields of concentration) with Harvard students. The Committee to be charged with encouraging instruction in Afro-American Studies (see Section II) should be given responsibility for discovering and disseminating such information.

A Social and Cultural Center

The black student's desire for some continuing identification with the black community poses a particular challenge to the present structure of undergraduate life. The House system in particular works splendidly in terms of the traditional Harvard goal of "integrating" students from a variety of backgrounds. But the black students feel that the system, by its very nature, works a perhaps too thorough fragmentation of the black student community, most obviously at Radcliffe, where dispersal of black students has, at least in the past, led to the assignment of but a single black student in one residence hall.

Most black students do not challenge integration as an appropriate goal for a national university such as Harvard, and only a few are presently urging a more separatist structure, such as a dormitory solely for blacks. Several black freshman have expressed a desire for "an elective all black floor" in one of the Yard dormitories, and other students have recommended that Harvard investigate "the feasibility of a co-educational co-operative dorm" for black students, also elective.

The desire for some "all-black experience" as a part of a student's Harvard experience is also reflected in the almost unanimous desire of black students for an exchange program "between Harvard-Radcliffe and black Southern colleges." There are other reasons behind the demand for such a program, including the desire of those students who wish to concentrate in Afro-American Studies to avail themselves of the programs, and research resources of black colleges. There is also the expectation that such a program, which would give students from black Southern colleges an opportunity to share the Harvard experience, might result in more such students transferring to Harvard for their upperclass years.

We strongly recommend that such an exchange program be devised and made available to Harvard students for a term of their sophomore, junior, or senior year.

Among black students there is a strong and definite, indeed presumably unanimous, desire for the creation of a social and cultural center for black students. Such a center is conceived as something of a counter-part of Hillel House, the Newman Center, or the International Center. Such a center would provide the black students opportunities different from, but in addition to, the more general social and cultural life of the College, and of the Houses.

This center would be, it is assumed, independent of the University, both in location and financing. But obviously students cannot, by themselves, develop or maintain such a center. Although the students have indicated that they have some sources of support on which they can and will call directly, it is recommended that the Dean urge all appropriate elements of the University to use their good offices in securing and financing a building and providing continuing support to the activities of such a social and cultural center.

The students attach considerable priority to this center as a means of enriching the social and cultural experience of black Harvard students. Among the responsibilities envisioned for this center is the sponsorship of freshman "orientation week" activities for black students, supported and publicized by College authorities.

Neither this nor any other activities of the center, to be devised and developed by the student membership, is intended--any more than the comparable facilities and activities available to other student groups--to separate black students or their interests entirely from the life of the College Quite the contrary, the students urge such a center as among the steps to be taken "to make the black student feel more involved and less isolated in this community."

Nor do the students wish to withdraw from the general cultural life of Harvard, or its Houses. They strongly urge, however, that the various elements of the University, and most especially the Houses, make greater efforts to bring more black artists and art, black visiting speakers and writers, to the College--for the benefit not only of black students but of the larger community. We strongly recommend that Masters, House Committees, and other bodies, make a greater effort to secure such visits, in co-operation with the black students, who have expressed an eagerness to assist the House Masters and others in securing visitors.

Advisors, Proctors and Tutors

One of the many functions of a student center would be that of providing opportunities for greater contact between black undergraduates and black graduate students. Without question one of the major problems for the black undergraduate is the lack of older blacks available as advisors. There is a special need felt for more black advisors available to black students in their freshman year, but the availability of such advisors is by no means a total solution.

There is a need for more black students serving as tutors in the Bureau of Study Counsel, and for some means--a published directory--for indicating, for the benefit of undergraduates, the special interests and talents of black graduate students. What is needed generally is more blacks serving throughout the University in positions of responsibility and authority, as members of the Administration as well as of the teaching Faculty. We specifically urge the Dean to make, in the immediate future, an appropriate appointment to a high-level administrative position.

The Committee's recommendation for recruitment of a greater number of black graduate students (see Section IV) will, when implemented, presumably add to the number of blacks serving as advisors, tutors, and the like. A program of fellowships and active recruitment will bring more blacks to the Harvard graduate school, and these students will in time be available as teaching fellows, House tutors, and for such positions as Senior Tutor. However, pending this development, it is recommended that the Committee on Houses and the Freshman Dean be advised again that the black undergraduates feel that blacks are woefully underrepresented as tutors and proctors in the Houses and in the Freshman dormitories. Even now there are blacks in the graduate school who, it is hoped, would be willing to serve as tutors in the Houses. However, there is a larger number of blacks enrolled in the other Harvard graduate schools, who may be available for freshman proctoring and advising.

The University and the Community

Finally, the black students are as a group concerned about the relationships between the University and the community. The black student believes that the University discriminates against blacks in its hiring policies; that the contractors it employs are likewise discriminatory; that its rental policies are negative in terms of the black community (its rentals are overpriced, and it "squeezes poor people out"); that its investment policies are indifferent to the "racism" of specific corporations and indifferent to the capital needs of the black community; and that in general Harvard is uninterested in the "morality" of its operations.

Obviously these grievances touch on areas well outside the jurisdiction of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and this committee has not found it possible to amass and assess all the evidence in these areas. However we all strongly feel that Harvard should create an environment in which racial justice prevails at all levels and in which civil rights legislation is fully implemented. To this end we urge the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences to convey this summary of student sentiments and our concern to the operating departments of the University, and to the Governing Boards.

We recommend the appointment of an appropriate committee to assess Harvard's hiring, contact, and real estate policies. We also suggest the formulation of a committee to re-examine Harvard's investment policies to assess the degree to which these policies retard or promote the economic development of the black people and racial equality in America, with a view to stimulating black economic development in ways analogous to the investment program recently announced by the consortium of American foundations.

There are areas in which more immediate action can be taken, that fall within the jurisdiction or control, direct or indirect, of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences or its constituent members. Although the students recognized that many Departments have attempted to employ a greater number of blacks, more must be done to improve hiring policies with respect to blacks. Contractors engaged to work on University projects must be required to meet hiring standards analagous to those established for Federal contracts. And the departments, including the academic, the operating, and the support departments, must make a greater effort to hire a higher proportion of blacks--in clerical and administrative positions as well as among the trades.

The areas investigated by this committee by no means exhaust the factors that affect the quality of black student life at Harvard. Obviously the life of blacks generally in the United States today cannot but impinge on the consciousness of the black Harvard student. But our findings and recommendations have been limited to those areas where the black is affected as a student at Harvard, and over which the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences has some degree of control.

We have recommended assistance in the creation of a social and cultural center for black students, the enrichment and adaptation to the needs of black students of the cultural life of the Houses, an increase in the number of blacks in tutorial positions, and indeed, in all positions of authority and responsibility within the University. And we have underscored, as of primary importance to the black student, an enrichment of the Harvard curriculum and an expansion of its degree programs, to provide black students opportunities to pursue studies and research in their areas of special concern.

Presumably other steps will be needed as well, but those we have recommended will, we believe, improve to some degree the quality of black student life. Indeed, little that the students have called for, or that we have recommended, can have any other effect than the improvement of the quality of student life generally at Harvard. We have asked for changes that will surely alter the quality of life at this institution, but like the students, we have aimed at a life that is not different merely, but better and richer.

The Present Situation at Harvard

Courses

A great deal of material by and about Afro-American people is presented in courses offered by members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Most of these courses treat the Afro-American experience in the context of more general aspects of American life: social, political and intellectual history, urban problems, race and ethnic group relations, to name just a few. Only one course, Social Sciences 5, and a few group tutorials for credit in Social Relations and Government, focus exclusively on the history and culture of Afro-Americans.

Most departmental requirements for concentration permit students to do considerable work in Afro-American studies. Head Tutors reported that courses, tutorial and independent study dealing with Afro-American material could, under present rules, be counted for concentration and related work. The Government Department, for example, noted that "in three of the four required areas. . . it would be possible for a student with a strong interest in black studies to fulfill his Departmental requirements with work in this area." In Social Relations, the "basic policy is to encourage students with such interests by allowing them to develop a program drawing upon the full resources of the University." Similarly, concentration requirements in History, English, Social Studies, and History and Literature, would permit students to fulfill from a third to half their requirements for concentration with courses in Afro-American studies.

It should be noted, however, that the relative absence of middle level courses dealing entirely or primarily with Afro-American material makes it difficult for students to act on the freedom implied by these rules. Moreover, there are at present no special fields in Afro-American Studies within existing departments or committees of instruction.

The growing interest in Afro-American Studies has stimulated the development of informal but carefully conceived study groups and non-credit seminars. In two Houses, for example, groups are studying black literature. Faculty members, graduate students and undergraduates have participated in planning and teaching these groups. In addition, a number of relevant seminars are offered by the Institute of Politics.

In our opinion, the status quo with respect to Afro-American Studies at Harvard is not satisfactory. Quite a number of courses recognize the existence of black men in the development of America; quite a bit of expertise is already available. However, merely recognizing black men as integral segments of certain overall social processes is not good enough. We are dealing with 25 million of our own people with a special history, culture, and range of problems. It can hardly be doubted that the study of black men in America is a legitimate and urgent academic endeavor.

If this be so and if we are determined to launch this field of study successfully, farsighted goals and programs are required. These goals and programs should maintain and even raise academic standards; should avoid considering the black experience in isolation; and finally, should have meaning for all serious students--black and white. We believe that the