Women Put Blame on HEW For Harvard Hiring Study

Two women's groups have sent letters to Elliot Richardson '41, secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, charging that an HEW report on Harvard's hiring practices submitted last month is a "whitewash" of the University's treatment of women.

The letters came in response to an unreleased "letter of finding" which HEW investigators gave to Edward Wright Jr., assistant to President Pusey for Minority Affairs. The letter detailed HEW's objections to Harvard's hiring and promotion policies with regard to minority groups and women.

Harvard is expected to prepare an "affirmative action plan" in response to the report.

The HEW investigation began last April when investigators asked Harvard to open its personnel files to determine whether the University discriminated in hiring and promotion on the basis of race, religion, national origin, or sex. Such discrimination is prohibited to any institution receiving federal funds under Executive Orders issued by President Johnson.

Harvard at first refused to open its files, but agreed when faced by a possible fund hold-up of contracts worth as much as $60 million.

The letter of protest, sent by the National Organization for Women and the Women's Equity Action League, charge that only three paragraphs of the five-page report deal with women.

Calling Harvard "one of the worst offenders concerning discrimination against women in the academic community," the WEAL letter called HEW's findings "a complete whitewash of the charges made concerning sex discrimination."

"No statistical data or analysis of data concerning the employment of women on the campus at Harvard in either faculty or staff was presented," it charged.

The letter was signed by Bernice Sandler, chairman of the WEAL Action Committee for Federal Contract Compliance in Education.

NOW Letter

The NOW letter-dated the following day-echoes the charges in the WEAL letter, adding, "NOW urges that top priority be given to the area of sex discrimination in the Harvard investigation, that the staff responsibility for the investigation include women at alllevels, and that any further letters of finding and proposed affirmative action plans be made public so that their full value may be assessed by those most directly concerned, i.e. women in the University."

The letter is signed by Roberta Benjamin, chairman of the Boston NOW Equal Academic Opportunity Task Force. Benjamin said last night that NOW has not received any reply from Richardson's office.

Benjamin said that she had seen a copy of the report before sending the letter.

"The statements that Dr. Sandler and I have made have been verified by the Boston office [of HEW's Office of Civil Rights]," she added.

However, Robert Albert, chief of the contract compliance branch of HEW's Office of Civil Rights in Boston, said yesterday that the authors of the letters "obviously haven't seen the report."

Albert said that the letter of finding was only a preliminary part of the investigation, which he described as "definitely an ongoing affair," and that it had not stressed women because Harvard's data on women had not been prepared fully by the time the report was submitted.

Asked if there had been women on the investigating staff which prepared the report, Albert said "We have two or three that were involved with it. I don't think that's a valid allegation anyway-that's like saying that all white liberals are liars when they try to work on black problems."

Speaking for the University, Wright said that Harvard would have no public statement on the letter of finding until an affirmative action program was prepared and submitted to HEW.

Of the protest letters, he said, "I don't know where they're getting their data."