Black Tenure

To the Editors of The Crimson:

Recent events at Harvard Law School have shed light on the School's inadequate efforts to increase the number of tenured Black faculty members. What has not been revealed to the public is the fact that the Law School has hired a greater percentage of Black faculty than has the University as a whole. The Law School does not deserve commendation for the proportion of its Black-faculty--a meager 2.89 percent--but Harvard University as a whole certainly deserves condemnation since its faculty, is composed of barely 1.02 percent Blacks. Out of over 2900 faculty members, only 30 are Black. Worse yet, these official Harvard University figures show that the number of Black faculty has decreased in recent years--a movement away from rather than toward their proportion in the American population.

Moreover, the University's Affirmative Action record in hiring Black Deans is almost as disreputable. In fact, there are presently no Black assistant deans, associate deans or full deans at the Design School, the Divinity School, the Education School, the Kennedy School, the Law School, or the Business School. Even though there are hundreds of qualified Black professionals, the University only employs five of them among its 101 Deans.

The number of other Black professions also constitutes a disgraceful underrepresentation of the number of Blacks in this nation. Of the 2678 "professionals" throughout Harvard University, only 117 of these professionals are Black (4 percent). Almost half of the University's 10 schools are utterly devoid of Black professionals, since most of these Blacks are Central Administration.

These discouraging figures course Blacks to continue to question the sincerity of the University's commitment to increase the number of Black students, executives, administrators, professionals, faculty, and deans. Given their respective histories, this nation and this University have a duty to make reparations to Blacks by making special and extended efforts to increase the number of Blacks at professional levels. Until Blacks in all walks of life are represented in proportions comparable to our proportions in the American population, we will not be fully compensated for past and present racism. Harvard University can procrastinate no more; now is the time for it to take action. Donald Christopher Tyler   John Silvanus Wilson   Co-Chairmen, the Black Student Coalition of   Harvard University