Faculty Predict Battle Over Bureaucracy

When the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) decides later this spring whether to implement the recommendations of a faculty affirmative action committee, the battle will be fought over bureaucracy and not philosophy.

According to professors who have read the report a week after its release, the proposals seem likely to generate little in the way of heated debate. But still, professors say, the proposed changes may encounter a fair amount of resistance from those faculty members who say they are against the bureaucracy.

The committee--chaired by Pforzheimer University Professor Sidney Verba '53--proposed last week that FAS establish several new administrative structures intended to improve Harvard's recruitment of women and minority scholars.

The committee proposed a three-tiered structure--composed of an associate dean for affirmative action, a standing faculty committee and an affirmative action representative for each department--to expedite Harvard's recruitment efforts.

But some faculty members and student activists say the structures will rely too much on the good intentions of those filling the newly created positions. They have charged that the institutional changes are not strong enough to guarantee progress.

And other faculty members express doubts about the administrative structures--not because they are weak--but because they add to the tangle of Harvard bureaucracy.

"It seems a very elaborate, bureaucratic set-up, and I'm always a little uneasy at further bureaucratizing the University," says Trumbull Professor of American History Donald H. Fleming. "I have some objections to bureaucratization, even if it gets something done."

"There is always some response of skepticism or some concern about anything that seems to increase the amount of paperwork that has to be filled out or the number of steps that have to be gone through," says Psychology Department Chair Brendan A. Maher, who has been named dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

"I think the spirit of it is certainly right," Maher says. "I'm not sure at all how it will work out in practice."

Specifically, several faculty members question the need for a new associate dean. "It seems to me we already have far too many associate and assistant deans," says Lee Professor of Economics Hendrik Houthakker.

But others argue that committees and bureaucracy are necessary evils at a large university like Harvard.

"I don't think adding another structure here to try to push the process along is bad," says Astronomy Deparment Chair Jonathan E. Grindlay. "I don't really see any other practical way to make concerted progress."

Professors also say that no amount of recruitment will attack the problem of low numbers of women and minorities going into academia.

"The question is really what can be done about it--and on that I think the report is basically whistling in the dark," says Houthakker. "I'm not sure a great deal can be done about it without letting time take its course."

Regardless of their positions on the report and its specific recommendations, professors say the faculty is not likely to line up in opposition to it.

"I think in general, people are going to accept it. I haven't sensed any groundswell of opposition," Grindlay says.

"Some of these things probably are going to be done," Fleming says. "I just don't know if they're going to be useful."