Harvard's Foot Dragging

A MASSACHUSETTS politician once remarked that Harvard makes a very good landmark from which to note the progress of the surrounding institutions. David Henshaw was speaking in 1836; despite ostentatious efforts by Harvard administrators in recent years to change this public image, Henshaw's words are true today. Oddly enough, one of the surrounding institutions that has conspicuously outdistanced Harvard of late is the U.S. government. Last June the Department of Health, Education and Welfare published a set of proposed regulations for the implementation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which forbids discrimination on the basis of sex in educational institutions on pain of losing federal funds. HEW invited comment on the regulations before publishing them in final form, and last month Harvard submitted its comments. These comments are largely the complaints of an institution being dragged forward against its will.

Harvard, however, sees itself as a wronged rather than unwilling victim. Armed with a five-volume affirmative action plan and designs of equal-access admissions in the near future, administrators have come to believe in the public image they have tried so hard to promote in the forefront of the fight against sex discrimination. As a result, one group of comments on the Title IX proposals is comprised of protests against detailed regulations, on grounds that such close supervision is unnecessary, and indeed sometimes offensive. The regulations require, for example, that institutions determine annually, by a method approved by HEW, what sports men and women students are interested in; Harvard complains that this is "an unnecessary interference in the internal operations of universities." The regulations also require that institutions include in all announcements, catalogs, bulletins and application forms a statement to the effect that it is not supposed to be discriminating against women. Harvard bucks at the specification of the means it should use, while acknowledging that institutions should be required to state that they do not discriminate.

THE UNIVERSITY'S objections to these regulations rest on the assumption that it can be trusted to abolish sex discrimination and take care of details on its own. In fact, its past record indicates that Harvard needs quite a bit of prodding when it comes to implementing general provisions. It took five months for it to put copies of its affirmative action plan in libraries, as required by law, and when Harvard finally did do so, it was mostly at the insistence of Women Employed at Harvard. There are any number of ways for a university to "make known" that it is not supposed to discriminate--just announcing that it doesn't is one way Harvard often employs--and without specific regulations institutions could easily fulfill the letter of the law while completely avoiding its spirit. And if Harvard is indeed as progressive as it would like to have the world believe, it shouldn't be afraid of people knowing that discrimination against women is illegal.

To object to the regulations based on the assumption that Harvard can be trusted to implement Title IX by itself indicates an unwillingness that is suspect given Harvard's record. A similar unwillingness is manifested in another section of Harvard's comments, those objecting to "ambiguities" in the regulations. One of these comments worries about the distinction between programs receiving and programs benefiting from federal aid. Another points out that there is no definition in the regulations of what constitutes "previous discrimination." A third simply argues that the section on athletics is "replete with ambiguities," without specifying what Harvard sees as ambiguous. None of the ambiguities referred to could possibly interfere with implementation of Title IX. There is no question that there has been "previous discrimination" at Harvard, however it is defined. And the distinction between programs which directly receive and programs which indirectly benefit from federal aid is unimportant, if the university is interested in getting rid of discrimination regardless of where it takes place.

THE EFFECT OF these essentially irrelevant comments, if HEW pays attention to them, would be to narrow the regulations' scope, and to pare down HEW's enforcement ability. Once again, then, whether Harvard's suggestions are valid depends on whether Harvard can be trusted to implement Title IX without close supervision. In a third group of comments, those which claim that the regulations "do not provide sufficient safeguards for women," Harvard seeks to show that it can be trusted, and that indeed it is in a position to give advice on the matter. One of these comments objects to the prohibition of all-male and all-female classes.

We have experimented with the agreement of students with separate classes for women in introductory physics in an effort to determine whether such an approach might encourage more women to study physics. Our thought has been that women may be deterred from taking the introductory course by the small number of women who enroll in physics and that we might be able to remove some of these inhibitions by offering all-women classes.

But there's a much easier way to remedy the problem of the small number of women who enroll in physics. That is equal admissions: if there were more women in the college, there would clearly be more women in physics. But this remedy, which is the more basic and consequently the more sincere, is one that Harvard has consistently rejected. Blaming the problem on women's inhibitions rather than the University's structure, Harvard protrays itself as solicitous of the "needs" of women students, rather than respectful of their rights.

IT IS THIS philosophy that underlies all of the comments. Harvard sees itself as a champion of women because it is willing to make a few concessions to them. It is unwilling, however, to make structural changes and to accept women as full members of the University community. It is because of this reluctance on the part of Harvard and other institutions that federal legislation such as Title IX came about and and it seems that only legislation or the threat of legislation has prompted Harvard's initial steps towards eradicating sex discrimination--its affirmative action plan and its designs for equal-access admissions.

For several years, women athletes had to fight for equal facilities; in June the Title IX regulations requiring that men and women have equal access to sports were published and by September the athletics department had worked out a comprehensive new plan for sharing up facilities and practice time.

Harvard's comments on the proposed Title IX regulations show that it is still unwilling to take bigger steps on its own. Until it can prove that it is, legislation will be necessary to force Harvard to abandon its position as a landmark in the history of discrimination against women.