The Text of Bok's Open Letter

Last fall, representatives of several minority student organizations asked me whether I would write an open letter on the subject of race at Harvard. After considering this request, I came to realize that the time for such a statement was opportune. In recent months, we have witnessed several events affecting the interests of minority groups that are unsettling to many students. The unauthorized disclosure of a preliminary discussion paper on admissions has caused many people to wonder whether we are reassessing our commitment to racial diversity. At the same time, the country has taken a sharp political turn that casts doubt on the future of many social reforms of the past two decades. Some individuals in high places have gone so far as to call for the repeal of affirmative action. In view of these uncertainties, I have decided to set forth what I believe to be appropriate policies for Harvard on the questions of race relations, affirmative action in faculty appointments, and the admission of minority students. While most of these policies are widely accepted in this community, different people may explain them in different ways and some may even disagree. As a result, in keeping with the nature of a university, I percent the following arguments as my own personal convictions and not as official doctrine.

Admissions Policies

We are all aware that most universities, including Harvard, have been making particular efforts to enroll significant numbers of minority students including Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans. Although universities have also admitted increasing numbers of Asian-Americans, such students have been enrolled in numbers that exceed their proportion of the national population without raising the policy issues discussed in this paper. This practice can be viewed as part of a broader attempt of long standing to assemble student bodies with a wide diversity of backgrounds, talents, and perspectives. Nevertheless, policies that favor the admission of minority students have not been universally accepted but have provoked a heated discussion in the society.

Much of this debate is not particularly helpful because it does not reflect a clear understanding of how the admissions process works and what it is trying to achieve. For example, critics often argue against special efforts to enroll minority students on the ground that they are unjust to applicants with higher grades and standardized test scores who allegedly "deserve to be admitted on the merits." But what are "the merits" and why must they be measured by prior grades and test scores? One cannot begin to answer such questions without first inquiring into the goals that we should seek to achieve in assembling a class from a large number of applicants. And that is a subject rarely discussed by most of the writers on either side of the minority admissions debate.

In an ideal world, where admissions officers knew everything, they would presumably try to admit a class that would permit their university to make the greatest contribution to its students and ultimately to the society as a whole. In order to achieve this goal, an admissions committee would certainly begin by rejecting all applicants who seemed unable to meet the normal academic standards of the university, for no one will benefit if students are admitted who cannot graduate. But suppose that a large surplus of well-qualified applicants remained after this preliminary screening. What would the committee do next? After considering the matter, it would probably select those applicants who would make the greatest progress in improving their powers of analysis, their capacity for legal reasoning, their abilities of self-expression, their capacities for management, or whatever educational goals the institution in question happened to embrace. But even this criterion would not be sufficient in itself; it would need to be modified to reflect two further considerations. Since a university is interested in the growth of all its students--and because we know that students learn much from one another--it would prefer to admit applicants who could bring to the institution some distinctive talent, or special attribute, or set of experiences that would enhance the education of others. And since the university is interested in helping society, admissions officers would also favor applicants who seemed especially likely in later life to use what they learned to benefit the communities and professions in which they lived and worked.

In practice, of course, it is extremely difficult to select students according to these criteria. We simply do not know enough to predict with certainty which students will profit the most from their experience at the university or which will contribute most to their fellow students and eventually to the society. Nor would we readily agree on exactly which criteria to use in order to measure contributions to society or which forms of diversity will be of greatest benefit to other students.

Hampered by insufficient knowledge, admissions officers have tended to rely heavily on prior grades and standardized test scores. Combined judiciously, these criteria do provide a moderately strong basis for predicting a student's grades during the first year following admission (although they correlate less well with grades in subsequent years). As a result, prior grades and scores are the best measures we have to meet our threshold goal of screening out those applicants who are likely to have trouble meeting the normal academic standards of the institution.

But prior grades and scores are much less useful in deciding whom to admit from a large number of well-qualified applicants. Although these criteria help to predict first-year academic performance, they are more an index of a certain kind of native intellectual capacity than a measure of a student's ability to learn and develop over time. Applicants with exceptional prior grades and scores may enter college with sufficient ability to absorb material of great complexity, and that is a factor to consider in assessing how much they may gain from their studies. Over their entire course of study, however, such students may not improve their powers of analysis and, self-expression or even enlarge their store of knowledge to the same extent as classmates with strong but not outstanding talents who work conscientiously throughout their career in the university. Moreover, grades and test scores tell us little about the progress students can make toward subtler educational goals, such as ethical sensitivity, creativity, or a capacity to work effectively with others. For these reasons, in the difficult process of choosing among well-qualified applicants, the standard criteria for admission are certainly relevant, but they are not nearly as useful as many people suppose in helping to identify the students who will benefit most from attending the institution.

Prior tests and scores tell us even less about an applicant's capacity to make a contribution in later life. Numerous studies reveal that even substantial differences in tests and scores explain very little of the variations in the success students achieve in many careers, whether success is measured by salary or by more refined criteria of accomplishment. Ii is true that high grades and scores may have a significant bearing on the ability to succeed in research or in other callings that make unusual intellectual demands. Since universities are legitimately interested in preparing students for such careers, they may well decide to enroll an ample number of applicants who possess exceptional academic aptitude. Indeed, graduate departments may understandably place a dominant weight on precisely this quality in selecting applicants for Ph.D. programs. But universities are also interested in preparing students for many occupations in which a host of other factors play an important role in determining achievement in later life. As a result, admissions officers in selective colleges and professional schools can admit large numbers of applicants with test scores that are substantially below their median without running a significant risk that such students will accomplish less in their subsequent careers.

Grades and test scores are also of limited value in predicting an applicant's potential for enhancing the education of classmates. Such contributions can obviously take many forms that have little to do with academic prowess. Thus, a class admitted solely on the basis of tests and grades might well turn out to be much less interesting and stimulating than a class selected by more diverse criteria. To be sure, one can make a plausible argument that students with outstanding intellectual talents--say, the top tenth or top quarter of the class--will set a high example of academic achievement that may motivate and stimulate their peers. Even so, there will be more than enough room for these exceptional students whether or not an admissions committee seeks to enroll other applicants with different talents and characteristics that promise to contribute in other ways to the strength of the class as a whole.

In view of our admissions objectives, what can we say about the status of minority applicants in the ad-

Notwithstanding these trends, frustration continues over the small number of minority professors. At times, such attitudes take the form of impatience over the procedures and methods of affirmative action and a desire to talk only about results. At other times, claims are made that our appointments criteria are biased and wrongly conceived and that satisfactory progress would surly occur if the faculty could somehow be persuaded to alter their traditional standards.

Let me make clear that I reject these arguments and believe that they neither reflect Harvard's best interests nor take accurate account of the underlying problem we face in finding more minority candidates for the faculty. Having personally participated in more than two hundred tenured appointments over the past ten years, I feel strongly that our criteria for choosing faculty are soundly conceived and fairly administered. Standards for professorial appointments must reflect the central mission of an academic institution, and missions vary among different types of universities. At Harvard, our overriding objective is to pursue the discovery and transmission of knowledge at the highest and most demanding level. In each faculty appointment we make, our aim must be to find the best available person anywhere in the world to help further these purposes. The constant struggle to maintain this standard is chiefly responsible for whatever reputation Harvard enjoys in the academic world. The success we have achieved in meeting this standard has also accounted, directly or indirectly, for the decision of most of our students to attend this institution.

I would agree that diversity in our faculty may bring intangible values to our community, It can be argued that minority professors may have a special perspective that will yield valuable insights in certain fields of study. If such perspectives can actually be shown to have added to the quality and originality of a candidate's work, they must of course be given due weight in assessing the candidate's contributions to learning and knowledge. and I also recognize the special support and encouragement that minority faculty can often provide for our minority students. These advantages provide added reasons for a strong affirmative action effort and for appointing minority scholars whenever they have academic abilities that are equal to those of the other leading candidates. But none of these considerations offers a sufficient reason for departing from our primary commitment to appoint those candidates who are most likely to contribute the discovery and transmission of knowledge.

As a practical matter, moreover, efforts to increase minority representation by altering selection policies are missions process? Some writers have argued for the enrollment of significant numbers of minority students as a form of compensation for injustices visited upon racial groups especially during earlier periods of our history. But such arguments raise many trouble-some questions. It is quite unclear which of the many deprivations and injustices in a society should entitle students to such treatment, or whether every applicant from a minority group is truly more deserving of favored treatment than every while applicant who is rejected, or whether Harvard as an institution bears enough responsibility for earlier injustices to have an obligation to respond in this fashion. Instead of embracing such theories, therefore, I prefer to rely on different, more forward-looking reasons to explain our policies. To begin with, the selection of minority applicants furthers Harvard's commitment to assembling a diverse student body. surveys of our graduating classes have repeatedly shown that students believe they have benefited as much in their personal development from contact with each other as they have from their readings and lectures. Studies of other institutions suggest that students who can interact closely by living together in campus facilities show greater progress toward important educational goals than students who commute to nonresidential colleges. as a result, an enlightened admissions committee will wish to assemble a class with widely varying backgrounds and talents so that every student has a chance to encounter a broad range of values, perspectives, and experiences from which to draw stimulus in developing as a person. From this standpoint, in a country where racial issues are so important, everyone can benefit from the chance to live and work with classmates of other races who bring differing attitudes and experiences with which to challenge and inform one another and increase the understanding and tolerance of all concerned.

A sound admissions policy should also provide for special efforts to enroll able minority students because they have unusual opportunities to make important contributions to society after they graduate. By any test, talented, well-prepared men and women from minority groups have greater access to productive careers than ever before. Our national policy of affirmative action reveals the value we now place on finding such persons to fill responsible posts throughout society. Whether minority students eventually hold influential positions in corporations, government agencies, hospital, law firms, and universities or whether they decide to work in disadvantaged communities that lack many kinds of needed services, they will have all of the possibilities that any graduate would have to live rewarding and contributing lives. But because there are still so few minority persons occupying influential posts, they are likely to have unique opportunities to enhance racial understanding and to awaken others to the needs and problems of minorities. In addition, by their example, they may help to raise the aspirations of other Blacks and Hispanics and Native Americans to seek careers and levels of achievement that will help to establish greater equality throughout the society.

The opportunities for minority students to contribute to the understanding of their fellow students and to the welfare of society as a whole seem sufficiently important to us to justify an effort to enroll a significant number of applicants from these racial groups. This policy leads us to admit some minority students with prior grades and test scores somewhat below those of other applicants whom we must turn aside. The same is often true of other students whom we particularly wish to enroll in order to assemble a class of great diversity and promise. This does it mean that we should fix some predetermined goal or quota for minority students or for any other category or group. All applicants must be evaluated as individuals, and attention must be paid in each case to all of the characteristics and qualities that relate to our educational goals. In making these assessments, however, we cannot rely exclusively on prior grades and test scores, since these criteria clearly fail to provide a sufficiently reliable or comprehensive means of helping us achieve our objectives.

Like any admissions philosophy, the rationale just described is based on informed judgment rather than established fact. It does seem reasonable to suppose that special efforts to assemble a diverse student body will add to racial understanding and that well-prepared Blacks, Hispanics, and other minority graduates will have important contributions to make, especially during the next generation. Indeed, the nation faces a bleak and dispiriting future if our assumptions turn out to be incorrect. it is true that these assumptions are articles of faith, like other fundamental tenets of an academic community, and have neither been demonstrated empirically nor been free of criticism. Nevertheless, I belive them to be sound and will continue to uphold them at Harvard and to defend them, as we did in the Bakke and De Funis litigation, against any effort from outside the University to overrule out pol- icies and limit our authority to use our own judgment in admitting students to this institutions.

Race Relations

The topic of race relations at Harvard has been much discussed in recent years. But we have not been as clear as we might be in stating the objectives of the institution against which the climate of race relations can be measured and evaluated. In my opinion, the pertinent objectives are three in number.

First, all students at Harvard should have an equal opportunity to gain as much from their experience here as their interests and talents permit.

Second, we should endeavor to build an atmosphere at Harvard in which all students feel welcome, accepted, and sufficiently confident of their status that they can devote themselves fully to obtaining the best possible education in the broadest sense of that term.

Third, we should encourage the fullest interchange among all students as a means of furthering their own education, mutual understanding, and personal development. The desire for such interchange flows naturally from our commitment to diversity in admissions and helps to explain the maintenance of such programs as the House system in the College. In our view, if makes little sense to come to Harvard without taking advantage of the extraordinary variety of human talent, experience, and outlook represented in this institution, for that is one of the principal values and opportunities that the University affords.

These goals are doubtless shared by other similar colleges and universities. In all these institutions, the record of achievement is uneven, and Harvard is no exception. We have obviously made considerable progress toward our objectives. It is just as obvious that we have some distance yet to travel.

We have come furthest in providing equal opportunities regardless of race; the University does not engage in any overt practices of policies of a discriminatory nature. On the other hand, we have not made as much progress in gaining our second objective. Too many minority students still appear to view themselves as guests in a strange house, not entirely certain how they are regarded and ambivalent enough in their feelings that they find it hard to benefit fully from their Harvard experience.

Our third goal is also only partially achieved. According to the recent Study of Race Relations at Harvard College, substantial interchange does occur among undergraduates of all races. Less than ten percent of all minority students claim to have no white friends and a majority have more than five. less than ten percent of minorities report that they do not mix with whites at meals or in social activities and student organizations, and a majority claim that they often interact in these settings. On the other hand, white undergraduates tend to believe that most minority students are too separatist, and fifty percent of black students concede that mixing socially with whites will "cut down your acceptance with your peer group," at least to some extent. Underlying these perceptions is a widespread belief among all students that interchange between members of different racial groups is often characterized by some degree of defensiveness, stereotyping, and, occasionally, even discriminatory attitudes.

I am not qualified to explore in depth the reasons for these phenomena, still less to prescribe to students how they should carry on their social lives. I am gratified to learn from the Race Relations report that overwhelming majorities of all races wish to improve the racial climate at Harvard, that they believe that the responsibility lies primarily with the students themselves, and that they feel that all racial groups share an equal responsibility to make further progress toward this end. Beyond endorsing these sentiments, I can only emphasize three points that seem fundamental to the goals of the insitutions.

First, acts of racial discrimination are unacceptable and should not be practiced or tolerated by anyone within the University.

Second, efforts to discourage interchange among members of different races defeat the purposes of a Harvard education and are inconsistent with its values and objectives.

Third, while respecting the personal nature of each individual's relationships toward others, the University should encourage any useful effort that promises to increase mutual understanding and diminish racial stereotyping and other subtle barriers that work against a genuine appreciation of others.

Beyond these general principles, there are further steps that the faculty and administration can take in order to help achieve the goals I have previously defined.

To begin with, we should make it abundantly clear, as I have tried to do in this letter, that our minority students are welcomed here as fully as any other group of students--because they meet our intellectual standards, because they enrich our diverse community with their presence, because they have much to contribute in later life with whatever assistance we can provide them.

In our teaching programs, we should recognize that the history and culture of minority groups and the racial problems in our society are subjects that are not merely of interest to our large minority populations; they have much to contribute to all who learn here, especially today when there is evidence to suggest that many students come to Harvard with less understanding of these issues than their predecessors had only a decade ago. These concerns touch many areas of the curriculum. They also remind us of the need to maintain our commitment to Afro-American studies under its new leadership, making clear that we regard this effort not as a questionable field of study nor as a political concession but as an opportunity to teach and explore important areas of human experience in this country.

Within the classroom, there are occasional reports of behavior by instructors that appears condescending or subtly racist to some students. Fortunately, the incidence does not appear to be high. In the Race Relations report, large majorities of all minority groups indicated that they had never encountered faculty members or teaching fellows who seemed to question their ability to perform well academically. Only tiny proportions reported experiencing three or more such episodes, and we have no way of knowing whether these incidents were real or only innocent misunderstandings. Even so, significant numbers of minority students seem to suspect that professors and classmates question their ability, and there is undoubtedly some degree of ambiguity in the minds of many of these students as to where they stand, or are thought to stand, academically. In this atmosphere, it is clearly important that faculty members and administrators consider all students on their own individual merits. In addition, we must take particular care to be candid in communicating with students of all races about their academic work and other matters involving their life at the University. Just as we must accord due recognition to minority students when they excel, so also must we be careful not to withhold honest criticism out of exaggerated concern for their sensitivities. For professors and administrators who are not members of a minority group, the latter talk may be considerably harder than the former. So much has been said in recent years about the subtler forms of racism and racial condescension that one can easily become inhibited and say nothing rather than risk being misinterpreted. Yet this temptation must be resisted, for nothing will contribute more than lack of candor to the atmosphere of ambiguity and insecurity that many minority students seem to experience in this community.

Beyond the classroom there has been much discussion of late concerning the desirability of a University-wide Third World Center at Harvard. This project has been the particular concern of a number of minority students, some of whom have asked me to express my views candidly on the subject. I shall do my best to reply in this spirit.

My reaction to such proposals is much influenced by the form that such a project might take. One could conceive of the Center as a physical facility serving as some sort of cultural and recreational resources, nominally open to all students but effectively used almost exclusively by minorities. I would not want to forbid this type of facility any more than I would wish to deny the right of any group of students with similar interests or backgrounds to gather together informally in pursuit of common interests. On the other hand, I do not advocate investing Harvard's resources in such a project. While any group is free to gather and socialize as it chooses, Harvard's aim is to encourage interchange among all types of students. As a result, I would not attach a high priority to any project that might serve, at least symbolically, to emphasize a separation between different races. Moreover, in these times of financial stringency, the University cannot afford to embark upon a commitment to provide special facilities for the social and cultural needs of particular categories of students, bearing in mind the long list of different interests and groups that presently exist in this diverse community.

On the other hand, one can conceive of another type of organization with the primary mission of improving racial understanding at Harvard and supporting activities and programs that bring to the entire community a greater appreciation of other cultural perspectives and traditions. It is this model that has recently been proposed by the committee chaired by Peter Gomes which recommends "that Harvard University establish a foundation devoted to the improvement of relations among racial and ethnic groups within the University."

If there is genuine interest in this project, I will advocate support for the enterprise--modestly at the beginning but more substantially over time if the effort attracts sustained commitment and achieves constructive results. At the same time, we should not allow ourselves to believe that the task of improving racial understanding at Harvard can be simply left to a single institution, however vigorous and resourceful it may turn out to be. Instead, we should all be alert to any useful opportunity throughout the University of address racial problems openly and to promote greater understanding among all groups of students.

Affirmative Action

A final opportunity to contribute to a better climate of race relations involves the appointment of minority professors and administrators and the much-debated topic of affirmative action. Since the future of affirmative action has been questioned in recent months, it might be useful to speculate on what Harvard would do if all government regulations on the subject were suddenly repealed (even though I do not anticipate that this result will occur). If the government did withdraw, would we cast the program off as an unwelcome burden? Or would we continue to observe the principles of affirmative action, albeit in a form better adapted to our institutional needs?

In order to answer to these questions, I should begin by defining what I conceive to be the basic precepts of affirmative action, as they relate to members of minority groups. These precepts are essentially three in number. First, every institution should carefully monitor its performance in hiring members of minority groups. Second, in all job searches, particular efforts should be made to identify possible candidates from these groups by advertising and making special inquires. Third, in its hiring decisions, the university should give specific consideration to any promising minority candidates, but the individual finally selected should be the person who is thought best qualified to perform the job, subject only to the proviso that minority candidates should be chosen if their qualifications are equal to those of the other leading contenders. Contrary to the views of many critics, affirmative action does not require reverse discrimination or the imposition of quotas by universities. Academic institutions may have resorted to reverse discrimination but, if so, such actions presumably resulted from internal pressure, mistaken impressions of the law, or some other cause, and not from any actual legal requirement.

Unfortunately, government agencies have administered affirmative action programs in an excessively cumbersome fashion. In particular, universities have had to prepare elaborate statistical expositions of dubious value and fill out innumerable forms and reports, often at the cost of time that could have been better spent in trying to achieve concrete results. These administrative excesses should be eliminated. On the other hand, the basic principles of affirmative action are not only sound but consistent with the aims of an academic institution. After all, any effort to enlarge the pool of candidates we consider for professorial appointments and key administrative posts will tend to improve the quality of faculty and staff. If successful, affirmative action may also achieve a greater diversity of outlook in the faculty and an opportunity for minority students to gain certain forms of counsel and support that they cannot always obtain as effectively from professors of other races. If these advantages can be realized in a manner consistent with the values and objectives of the University, they represent a clear gain for the institution.

If the principle of affirmative action have an enduring place at Harvard, what are the prospects for further progress? For certain groups, the outlook is good. Asian-Americans currently account for half of one percent of the total population, three percent of the Harvard student body, and three percent of the ladder faculty. On the other hand, prospects are not good for other minority groups although these groups are represented much less well in the Harvard faculty than they are in our students body or in the national population.

What accounts for these differences among minority groups? The most obvious answer is that Asian-Americans have entered academic careers in sufficient numbers that they hold a proportion of Ph.D's that is considerably larger than the percentage that they represent within the national population. Quite the opposite is true of other minorities. Less than two percent of the nation's Ph.D.'s are Black; even smaller proportions are held by Hispanics; and the number of Native Americans holding Ph.D.'s is extremely small. There is little sign that these trends will be reversed in the near future. The point is not that members of these minority groups are uninterested in pursuing educational opportunities beyond the bachelor's degree. On the contrary, in the past few years, large proportions of our Black undergraduates have gone on to study law, business, and medicine than is true of their white classmates. Last year, however, only 2 of 132 black graduating seniors elected to seek a Ph.D., and this record seems generally typical of other exceptionally talented minority students across the country.

I do not mean in any way to quarrel with this pattern of career choices. There are abundant opportunities in the professions for challenging and rewarding careers, and prospects for Ph.D.'s may seem uncertain and difficult in comparison. As long as this pattern persists, however, prospects for improving the proportions of Black, Hispanic, and Native American professors will continue to be poor.

Nothwithstanding these trends, frustration continues over the small under of minority professors. At times, such attitudes take the form of impatience over the procedures and methods of affirmative action and a desire to talk only about results. At other times, claims are made that our appointments criteria are biased and wrongly conceived and that satisfactory progress would surely occur if the faculty could somehow be persuaded to alter their traditional standards.

Let me make clear that I reject these arguments and believe that they neither reflect Harvard's best interests nor take accurate account of the underlying problem we face in finding more minority candidates for the faculty. Having personally participated in more than two hundred tenured appointments over the the past ten years, I feel strongly that our criteria for choosing faculty are soundly conceived and fairly administered. Standards for professorial appointments must reflect the central mission of an academic institutions, and missions vary among different types of universities. At Harvard, our overriding objective is to pursue the discovery and transmission of knowledge at the highest and most demanding level. In each faculty appointment we make, our aim must be to find the best available person anywhere in the world to help further these purposes. The constant struggle to maintain this standard is chiefly responsible for whatever reputation Harvard enjoys in the academic world. The success we have achieved in meeting this standard has also accounted, directly or indirectly, for the decision of most of our students to