Controversy

Controversies sprang up sporadically this year, arousing emotions in several parts of the University. The most publicized stir arose when the Sociology Department's senior Faculty members voted last fall not to recommend Theda R. Skocpol, associate professor of Sociology, for a tenured position. Those who voted against Skocpol--whose book, States and Social Revolutions, won one of the profession's highest awards--said they did so on the basis of her academic work. But some members of the department speculated that Skocpol's gender may have had something to do with the decision.

Shortly after the department's vote, Skocpol filed a complaint under the Faculty of Arts and Sciences' formal grievance procedure, charging the Sociology Department with sex discrimination in her case. A three-member Faculty panel met several times during the late fall and winter to hear testimony from Skocpol and members of the department. After weeks of deliberation, the panel released a report in which two members concluded that sex discrimination influenced the department's decision. The committee distinguished in its report between overt sexism--which all members agreed they had not found--and institutional sex discrimination. It also recommended that Dean Rosovsky advance Skocpol's case to the next step in the tenure process.

Rosovsky accepted that recommendation soon after receiving the report, but he indicated that he did not base his discrimination played a role in the department's vote. Instead, he cited the closeness of the department's vote and the grievance committee's suggestion that procedural problems may have affected the vote. Rosovsky also said he would defer the question of sex discrimination to the University's and Faculty's affirmative action offices.

Rosovsky's decision to advance Skockpol's case effectively overturned the department's vote. An ad hoc committee met last week to consider recommending the 33-year-old sociologist for tenure. Ad hoc committees, a regular part of the tenure process, are composed of three or four scholars from outside the University, two tentired members of the Faculty outside the department, and, as ex-officio members, Bok and Rosovsky. Bok has final say, subject to approval by the Harvard Corporation, on all tenure appointments.

Sociology was not the only department to be involved in a tenure controversy. Officials from the U.S. Department of Labor reportedly began discussions with University officials in March concerning a Labor Department report that cites Harvard for "deficiences" in attracting minority and women faculty. A source familiar with the report said the Labor Department found several Harvard departments to be "tracking in the opposite direction" in seeking minority and women faculty. The source also said that the report specifically finds fault with the Kennedy School of Government, which, it says, has made only weak efforts to recrak minority and women faculty as required by federal affirmative action codes.

The Kennedy School became the focus of an affirmative action-related controversy early in the year, when a national women's group filed a complaint against the school with the Labor Department, charging that the school has ignored federal affirmative action guidelines. The Women's Equity Action League (WEAL) also charged that the K-School had failed to adequately advertise faculty openings in minority-and women-oriented publications. The Labor Department report found the WEAL complaint "not without merit," according to the source.

The Law School, too, had some problems with affirmative action this year, which stemmed from the Law Review's desire to increase the representation of women and minorities on its staff. Toward that end, the Law Review staff voted in February to adopt an affirmative action system. A few days after the vote, three Review staff voted in February to adopt an affirmative action system. A few days after the vote, three Review staffers resigned in protest, calling the new procedure a quota system. Shortly thereafter, the Review staff voted to adopt a different affirmative action plan, under which selection would be based on merit rather than quotas.

The plan was to have gone into effect next fall, but the Law Faculty put a hold on implementation when it decided in March that the plan was not "consistent with the basic values of the Law School community." The Review staff later put an end to the controversy when it agreed with the faculty's desire to delay implementation, having effected from the law professors an endorsement of the idea of heterogeneity in the Review's membership.

One of the heated undergraduate debates of the year involved the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities (CRR), a student-Faculty disciplinary group established after the 1969 takeover of University Hall. Undergraduates have boycotted the committee since its inception, and it has not met in several years.

This year, however, the Freshman Class, Adams House, and South House voted to send representatives to the CRR. The freshmen later changed their minds--as have several freshman classes before them--after consulting with upperclassmen. Adams House also rescinded its vote, but South House stuck with its decision, reasoning that attempts to reform the CRR from within would be more effective than a boycott.

Another controversy involving undergraduates embroiled some ranking members of the administration as well. In October, it became known that Archie C. Epps III, dean of students, had co-signed last spring for $14,000 in loans and had used $2000 in College "discretionary funds" to pay off debts and expenses incurred by Harvard Delivery News Service (HDNS) partly became of alleged embezzlement by the former manager of HDNS, which was, until spring semester, responsible for campus delivery of The Boston Globe and The New York Times. The College eventually bailed out and then dissolved HDNS, while Dean Fox conducted an investigation of official use of "discretionary funds."