Where's The Action?

WALTER J. LEONARD'S bleak report on Harvard's affirmative action program shows just how little progress the University has made toward fulfilling its legal and moral responsibility to minorities and women. His condemnation is one more sign of the shallowness of Harvard's commitment to a diverse community open to all segments of society. As Leonard says in the report. "Not only have we not progressed a great deal since October 1971 (both statistically and attitudinally), but I fear we have moved back-ward from that date." It took three years for the University to work out an affirmative action program that met the legal requirements for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. The changes called for by this plan are minuscule at best and make Harvard's failure to reach its goals even more reprehensible.

Affirmative action depends upon the good faith of the individuals who make hiring and admissions decisions, and the individuals at Harvard have shown little, if any, desire to change Harvard's traditional white male orientation. The University is responsible, morally as well as according to federal law, for the actions of these individuals and must take the decision-making power away from those who have shown an unwillingness to meet Harvard's obligations to women and minorities. Instead of allowing the continued existence of search committees that are conditioned to select white men over minorities and women for non-tenured and tenured positions, the University should create search committees which contain significant numbers of both of these groups as well as students, for these are the people who are most committed to affirmative action. Glaring examples of the failure to hire or admit significant numbers of women or minorities are found in the administration offices of the University-particularly in the administration of Radcliffe, and in the Departments.

In addition, the lack of success of affirmative action at the graduate schools is particularly reproachable since it is these schools that feed candidates into the applicant pool for junior faculty positions. The claim that women and minorities do not receive faculty appointments because there is such a paucity of qualified applicants is hypocritical when placed against the meager attempts to recruit women and minorities into the graduate programs and lower level positions.

And there is no doubt this hypocrisy will persist unless changes not just in attitudes, which is a dubious proposition at best, but in the law, are brought about and enforced. The goals set for Harvard's affirmative action program must be substantially raised so that a numerical difference in the amount of women and minorities at Harvard finally does occur. And the Faculty should begin to specifically recruit women and minorities as is done in the graduate schools in order to raise the percentages of both of these groups within the University population.

Justice and fairness for women and minorities cannot be measured in the empty words and promises Harvard offers, but must be measured in results. In the case of Harvard's affirmative action program, the results, since 1971, are particularly damaging.