The Overburdening of the Underrepresented

They are one of the smallest contingents at Harvard.

University officials say they are 52 in number. Student activists disagree, claiming the official figure is twice the accurate count. The point at which the administrators and students converge, however, is that the number of minority faculty members is shamefully low and Harvard must improve its efforts to recruit more.

Because of their scarcity, minority faculty members say they often face unusual teaching, advising and administrative burdens. They also recognize the fact their population will likely remain small for many years, as the pool of Black and Hispanic graduate students is disproportionately tiny. But until Harvard is willing to lessen the load minorities face, it will not succeed in attracting faculty members who can provide insight into both new and established fields, professors say.

"Because of [my] race and gender, I end up taking on more than perhaps I ought to," says Carolivia Herron, assistant professor of Afro-American studies and comparative literature. Although Herron also serves as Afro-Am head tutor, she has not received the customary reduction in teaching load given to head tutors because of the diminished number of courses in her department. She says the administration is working out a plan to ease her teaching responsibilities in the future.

But, as Harvard has not yet filled two vacant positions in her department and several faculty members took leaves of absence this year, Herron was expected to make up for the lack of courses in addition to fulfilling her heavy administrative duties.

One of the few Black women faculty members at Harvard, Herron serves as a frequent adviser to minority students. Often minority students come to her for advice not because they are interested in her area of expertise, literature, but because she is a role model. In addition, Herron says she has spent extra time expanding course offerings in her department, which is not a mainstream, fully developed department such as History or Government.

All of these responsibilities, which most of her white peers do not share, detract from her own academic pursuits, Herron says. And scholarship is the key to tenure at Harvard. "If I only improved courses and didn't write a book, it would be academic suicide," she says, adding that she is currently working on a book. Other Black women faculty members are needed, Herron says, to help diffuse the responsibilities.

Herron's concerns about the overburdening of minority professors to the detriment of their scholarship are echoed by minority faculty members in other departments.

Assistant Professor of Japanese Haruko Iwasaki says that although she does not feel she has been a victim of discrimination, a distinct discrepancy is evident in the system. While most of the tenured faculty members in her department are white males, Iwasaki says those at the junior faculty level "are mostly women. The language side is 90 percent women and minority."

The situation may be improving in East Asian Languages and Civilizations as next year's chairman, Professor of Chinese History and Philosophy Wei-ming Tu, is Chinese. But the University's overall record in hiring Hispanic and Chicano faculty members has not been particularly good, professors agree.

The dearth of Hispanic and Chicano faculty members is especially distressing, Professor of Government Jorge I. Dominguez says, because Harvard has succeeded in attracting more Hispanic undergraduates in recent years. He says he is often asked to advise students studying Hispanic or Chicano issues, even though the subject is not in his field.

"When I am asked to teach a course [of this type], the only honest answer I can give is, I am not competent," Dominguez says, but he adds that he occasionally helps advise a thesis in this area.

Dominguez says it is important for the University to consider whether Harvard has scholars specializing in such subjects and whether Harvard has faculty members of various ethnicities. But Harvard has failed to attract both, he says.

Student Activism

The size of the minority faculty became a central point of student activism this year in the College and at the Law School. The Minority Students Alliance--an undergraduate organization--released a report in April charging that the University has failed to actively recruit minorities and calling on Harvard to investigate a "comprehensive plan" to attract minority scholars. The report also says the University is receiving fewer applications than in previous years. And at the Law School, about 50 Black students held a 24-hour sit-in in protest of the lack of minority faculty.

Dean of Faculty A. Michael Spence two weeks ago named a new faculty committee to review affirmative action at Harvard. Pforzheimer University Professor Sidney Verba, who chairs the committee, says the group will spend the summer examining the effectiveness of Harvard's policy for hiring minority and women faculty members and comparing it to other universities' plans. Verba says he hopes to make recommendations for a better recruitment policy to Spence by next Thanksgiving.

But many faculty members say that no matter what Harvard does, the University will have difficulty filling posts with minorities because the demand exceeds the supply. Although the number of minorities receiving Ph.Ds is rising, it is still not increasing as fast as the demand for Black, Hispanic and other underrpresented scholars.

One long-term solution to the problem is enticing more minorities to enter academia. In the last few months Harvard has launched programs to attract minorities to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS), both at Harvard and across the country.

Kenan Professor of English and American Literature and Language Helen H. Vendler, who is working to increase minority interest in graduate schools, says Harvard has a well-qualified body of minority undergraduates but needs to persuade them to go into academia. In the past, universities have been reluctant to encourage minority students to enter academia because it is not as stable a profession as law or medicine.

"The aspiriation to professions usually comes before the aspiration to pure scholarship," says Vendler of the pattern to create a minority middle class. But now, Blacks and Hispanics have begun to establish a middle class and can afford to venture into teaching, she says. "I would think there is a large enough Black middle class that their children can be scholars."

In addition, academic posts are expected to be more plentiful in the next few years, as about half of the current tenured professors reach retirement age. Vendler says she now feels confident enough when advising students about academic careers that she can predict that jobs will exist when they finish school. "The time has come to press very hard," she says.

Harvard's efforts to attract minorities will focus on "getting the news out," Vendler says. The main efforts toward Harvard undergraduates will include informational meetings at the DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research and within concentrations. GSAS sends a brochure to prospective students, and the school encourages students who have not taken the traditional educational route to explore the possibility of graduate school.

Harvard is also giving the faculty more say in graduate student admissions, Herron says. She says Vendler has helped increase the direct contact among the faculty, Dean of the Graduate School Sally Falk Moore and prospective students. "Since January of this year, the effort here has gone to a new level of intensity," Herron says, adding that she can now contact Moore directly to recommend candidates and gets an immediate answer to her requests.

And Herron says Moore's openness helps make students more secure about coming to a university that is associated with isolation and selectiveness. `It's very hard to convince students that we need and want you when you've had a mystique for so long," Herron says.

Dominguez says that attracting Hispanics to GSAS has been a particular problem. He says that when the University made a commitment to increase the number of minority students some years ago, GSAS was the one school that was unable to attract many Hispanics.

"That is why we have the odd circumstance of a fairly substantial number of Hispanic [undergraduates] and virtually none in the faculty," he says, adding he has seen little gain in attracting either Hispanics or people interested in studying Chicano culture since it first became a subject of academic study about 15 years ago.

Even if efforts to attract minorites to graduate schools are successful, they will not reach fruition for about 12 years, when students now beginning Ph.D programs will be up for tenure. And in the meantime, the system risks self-perpetuation because minority students may be reluctant to come to an institution where there are few minority faculty members.

Nonetheless, Vendler expresses optimism that minorities will follow the recent route of women scholars. "When possibilities are opened up, people rush in to fill them," she says.