A Foundation Primer

A brief history of the proposed Foundation to promote racial understanding at Harvard is illustrative, not only because it provides a case study in the University's bureaucratic process, but also because it shows the significant irony of the end product.

In spring 1980, a small, well-organized group of student activists petitioned President Bok for a campus Third World center. The students hoped a center would offer a support system for minorities at Harvard, along the lines of centers at several other prestigious universities such as Yale, Princeton and Stanford. Bok acknowledged that the proposal merited investigation, and he formed a student-faculty committee to investigate it. He gave the Rev. Peter J. Gomes, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals, the chairmanship of the committee.

The nine-member group determined that Third World students at the University have legitimate needs that were not being met by existing institutions--the Houses, the Freshman Dean's Office, the Bureau of Study Counsel and other organizations designed to give support to students.

This finding was neither surprising nor an affront to those institutions. Part of the problem lies in Harvard's loose, informal advising network; but mostly, the deficiency is attributable to the fact that these organizations were established to meet other needs.

Until 12 years ago, diversity at Harvard meant that there were good athletes, academics, and artists living in the same community. Now diversity has become a catch-word for the University's often-stated commitment to bringing students of all races and economic backgrounds to Cambridge, weaving them into Harvard's fabric and assuring that they consider themselves an integral part of the community.

The Gomes committee concluded that while University admissions had done a good job attracting minority students (Harvard was cited as having an exemplary admissions procedure in the Supreme Court's Bakke decision), the rest of the University was lagging in its responsibility once Third World students actually got here.

But the committee rejected a Third World center as a solution, arguing that such centers are often perceived as "separatist" at other schools and that "the perception almost always assures the reality." Instead, the group called in its January 1981 report for the creation of a Foundation to improve race relations by encouraging interaction between majority and minority students.

At first, the student group that asked Bok for a Third World center called the proposal "workable." By March, though, the group had disavowed the Foundation, saying it was not designed primarily to attend to the needs of Third World students, but to further the goal of better race relations. Furthermore, the student Third World Center Organization said, the burden of the Foundation's success was being put on the shoulders of minorities instead of the whites who were often "racially insensitive" to their situation.

Minority students did not disagree that better race relations should be the long-term objective of a Third World center. They simply contended that race relations would improve only when they felt more comfortable here.

The Foundation debate took place in the context of growing fear among Third World students. Cross burnings at nearby Williams and Amherst Colleges occurred last fall; a new president perceived as a threat to affirmative action was elected; and events at Harvard aggravated the tension. In mid-October, a preliminary report on Harvard admissions prepared by an assistant to Bok was disclosed. The report said that high test scores often overpredict the academic performance of women and minorities at schools like Harvard, a finding which Third World students called "invalid" and "racist." In early November, the president of the Black Students Association, Lydia P. Jackson '82, received a death and rape threat from an as yet undetermined caller warning her to refrain from "political activities."

The Gomes proposal proceeded to the Faculty, where professors discussed it on a philosophical level before getting down to nuts and bolts. Faculty reaction was lukewarm at best.

And so, by last spring, the Foundation had reached the stage where almost no one publicly believed in its viability besides Gomes and Bok. The students who had sparked discussion about the project wanted no part of it. Nathan I. Huggins, chairman of the Afro-American Studies Department, thought it unnecessary, saying the effort to improve race relations should be directed through the House system. Faculty conservatives thought it unwise, saying it might aggravate race relations.

Lacking open support on almost all fronts, Bok nonetheless referred the Gomes proposal to Dean Rosovsky and told him to set the Foundation in motion.

Over the summer, S. Allen Counter, associate professor of Neuroscience at the Medical School, was named the first director of the Harvard Foundation. He will operate out of an office in University Hall under the auspices of Dean Fox. The Foundation's governance structure will have three components under Counter:

* a student committee of representatives culled from various campus Third World organizations and including majority students;

* a 12-member committee of University Faculty and staff; and

* a group of approximately ten associates not connected with Harvard who will advise the Foundation and try to raise funds for its programs.

The student committee will be formed early this fall, and the Faculty committee has not yet met. So far, Counter has asked author Alex Haley, conductor Seiji Ozawa, and United Nations treasurer Rivington Winant to serve as associates.

Bok said at the time of Counter's appointment this summer that while there had been "some ambivalence" about the Foundation in several areas of the University, he "wouldn't be too pessimistic" about the Foundation's chances for success.

Counter has been out of town and was unavailable for comment, but he told the Harvard Gazette this summer that he opposed the idea of a Third World center. The activities of the Foundation, he said, "should not exclude the majority students because it seems to me that our ultimate goal is to get the majority students to recognize the presence and achievements and basic sameness of all students here."

Counter has pledged to work vigorously on the Foundation's behalf. But he opposes the idea of a physical facility for the Foundation. He said a cultural center could come to be known as "'That Third World building.' I don't want a place that majority students would feel uncomfortable coming into." One of the basic demands of students who set in motion the Foundation's evolution was a building with office space for campus minority organizations and a large meeting room. The groups trying to obtain building space will no longer do so through the Foundation, but Third World students last spring started soliciting funds from minority alumni to be used for the creation of a center without the University's financial assistance.

Gomes, who will sit on the Foundation's Faculty committee, says he thinks the University has made a wise decision by setting up the Foundation and installing Counter as its head. "The long view is the right view," he says. "We're most in need of a change not in policy, but in ethos."

For the Foundation to flourish, Gomes adds, it will need to gain lasting credibility with the Faculty. "The Foundation is meant to bring the community together, not to endow estrangement. We might not get quick results, so the project will require patience from all involved parties."

Thus far, Counter has tried to organize public policy programs in co-operation with the University's graduate schools, intercultural events and colloquia. He is working with Myra Mayman, director of the Office of the Arts, and has begun to encourage programs focusing on the scientific contributions of minorities.

Consider three plausible scenarios for the Foundation's future which readily come to mind.

In the first scenario, the ideal from Bok's and Counter's points of view, the Foundation attracts participation from both minority and majority students. The Foundation works as a sort of cultural and intellectual clearinghouse, fostering greater understanding among the races and giving Harvard another proud accomplishment to point to in its ongoing attempts at pioneering.

In the second, less palatable scenario, the Foundation starts strongly but loses momentum as it becomes clear that white students don't want to use the Foundation's resources to learn more about minorities and that Third World students think their time is better spent in political mobilization or in the libraries. The Foundation doesn't grow, but impatience does. Its funding is withdrawn after a few years, and the president of Harvard makes a regrettable statement calling the Foundation a noble, but unsuccessful, venture.

In the third and most distasteful scenario, the Foundation never gets off the ground but continues to flounder along, co-sponsoring speeches and the like but never becoming significant enough to outgrow the single office it maintains in University Hall. Third World students and white students show no real interest, but the Foundation offers a ready excuse for those members of the community who wish to rebut the notion that Harvard does nothing for its minorities. The presence of the Foundation furnishes a convenient excuse for those of this ilk to shunt aside minority concerns and avoid confronting the issue head on.

The immediate task facing Counter is to reconcile a wide variety of opinions and to correct misperceptions about the Foundation. It's stated goal is to search for common ground among the diverse groups of people at Harvard to achieve integration and better race relations. And the danger to be avoided is the possibility of the Foundation coming to fit Random House's eighth meaning of the word "foundation"--"a cosmetic, used as a base for ... make-up."PhotoThe Harvard CrimsonS. Allen Counter has asked Alex Haley to serve as an associate of the Harvard Foundation.