Long Way to Go

RACE RELATIONS has not been among the College's biggest successes over the past decade or so, so you have to give Dean of the College John b. Fox. Jr. '59 a certain amount of credit for taking on the controversial topic in his recently released annual report.

More important, Fox deserves credit for much of what is said in that report. The essays contains a thoughtful consideration of campus race relations, presenting several forthright conclusions. Perhaps most helpful is the careful distinction between the College's support of integration over as similation, and the frank admission that minorities are seriously underrepresented in teaching and advising positions.

Despite these strengths, however, the 15-page statement suffers from several significant oversights. The first is the report's reassertion of the college's intent to treat students as individuals rather than part of some (read minority) group. For this reason, the document states, "the College has steadfastly resisted the idea that academic issues should be addressed in a racial context." And later, "it has never been assumed that race is a determining characteristic that can or should govern one's experience in college, any more than sex or geographic back ground should."

The problem with this individualistic doctrine is that it creates a dangerous asymmetry for minorities at Harvard. Race-conscious policies are needed precisely because minorities are not treated as individuals, rather, they are often discriminated against--either directly or through the side-effects of underrepresentation--as members of a racial group. Harvard itself acknowledges the pertinence of the group affiliation of minority students by its race-conscious recruiting programs. To acknowledge shortcomings in Harvard's integration of racial groups without allowing for remedies that address groups, not just individuals, is shortsighted and will likely prove inadequate.

The doctrine articulated in the report also carries a note of naivete, for it fails to address the problem that the College and minority students have consistently interpreted events differently, and will probably continue to do so. What the administration views as "separatist," students may consider simply "pluralist" or "diverse"--goals the College has forcefully supported.

Some such contested interpretations are included in the report itself. Certainly not all students would agree with the report's self-congratulatory assertion that the Afro-Am Department has begun to "Fulfill the Faculty's original copies, and even to surpass them." Many students question that department's relative weakness in African languages and literature, for example. Similarly at least some minority students believe and adviser for minority concerns would be an essential resource for the special problems they face at Harvard, and would in no way represent a triumph of separatism. Perhaps most notably, minority groups and the administration have continued to view proposals for a Third World Center from diametrically opposed perspectives; the administration claims it would be divisive, the student groups contend it would be a source of support and would enhance campus unity.

Last spring, minority students went head to head with the College over whether or not to list minority orientation events on the freshman week calendar. The College considered the events "separatist;" the students did not. While Fox's report goes a long way toward clarifying the administration's guiding philosophy on racial issues, it fails to offer administrators a better means of hearing--and understanding--student views.