A 'Comfortable Place' For Eight Scholars

Harvard, 1968: The College is embroiled in a crisis Students, sparked by the assassination of Martin Luther King and a growing Black nationalist movement, are protesting for the creation of an Afro American Studies Department and greater recognition of undergraduate diversity. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) has no tenured Black faculty members.

Twenty-five years later. Harvard, 1993: A burgeoning Afro-American Studies concentration attracts top faculty members from other universities. But the Faculty has only three more Black full professors than it did in 1969--and despite several past hirings, presently the same number of tenured Black women: zero.

Like any period of radical change, 1968 and 1969 did not mark an easy time for professors or administrators. But lasting transformations resulted, beginning with the Faculty's first Black tenured professor in 1969. And 1969's Rosovsky Report advised the creation of the desired Afro-American studies program.

Faculty officials today say they are working to correct the dearth of Black faculty. They attribute the problem to a number of factors, including a historically trickling pipeline. But some scholars say Harvard could do more.

Black faculty members are clustered in only a few fields: two in government, two in sociology, two joint appointments in English and Afro-American studies, one in Afro-American studies and one joint appointment in anthropology and Afro-American studies.

No Black faculty are members of natural or physical sciences departments. This tendency toward clustering is noted by affirmative action officials.

And today's few Black faculty members are forced to take on increasing responsibilities, as they are frequently drawn from their research to act as committee members and guides to students.

Professor of Afro-American Studies K. Anthony Appiah left Duke for Harvard in 1991. Since his arrival, he and Afro-American Studies Department Chair Henry Louis Gates Jr. have taken great strides in rebuilding their department.

Harvard is a comfortable place for Black faculty, Appiah says. Other Black professors agree. Assistant Professor of Afro-American Studies and Anthropology J. Lorand Matory says he has encountered no prejudice among either his colleagues or students.

"It's a very congenial academic environment," Matory says. "In general, I've felt that if anything, my being a young, Black man here has made my colleagues and students more attentive to me than if I'd been a less novel category."

But due in part to the same deficit that makes Matory's presence a "novelty," some scholars feel conscious of their differences from white colleagues.

"I do feel I have different views and different interests [from many colleagues], and my gender and race do explain this very nicely," says Katherine Tate, associate professor of government. "I sometimes feel it's unfair I have to represent all of these interests on my own."

As the only Black woman professor in the FAS, Tate is acutely aware of her unique status.

"I still feel very resentful about that fact," she says. "I wasn't recruited to pioneer for the race."

And other professors echo Tate's sentiment. Conscious of their small numbers, they are well-acquainted with the responsibilities that can fall on their shoulders in an institution striving for diverse representation on many issues.

"Since there are very few of us, we end up being on more committees than anyone else," says Appiah.

Appiah, chair of the student faculty committee on race relations, says a Black scholar's primary job, like any professor's is to be a teacher and researcher.

"No, I definitely don't think that [involvement in College race relations issues] is part of the job description," he says. "Some of the most active faculty on these issues are not Black."

But the sense of responsibility on race relations issues varies from scholar to scholar Matory feels that his classes, in which he encourages intercultural dialogue, contribute to improve understanding. Many activist initiatives must come from students, he says, because professors are often too cautious.

"There can be no dialogue, no introspection, unless there is a forum for it and an occasion for it," he says. "In a way, it seems to me that Harvard students, unlike Harvard professors, like to do controversial things."

Black professors, by their very presence, have consistently been at the center of mediating race relations. From the surge of hiring in the late 1960s, the presence or absence of Black faculty has been a rallying point for politically active students.

The motivation behind calls for increased Black Faculty representation varies widely, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Peter J. Gomes, a member of both the FAS and Divinity School faculties, says he sees student activism as a crucial component of that reasoning.

"We're here, in some sense, for the delectation of undergraduates," he says. But "we're not here simply to represent the demographics of the student body."

Harvard's Black faculty are "the best in their fields, not demographic tokens" selected for affirmative action goals, Gomes says.

Other Black scholars say the presence of underrepresented groups, both minorities and women, can bring a voice to the University that it might otherwise lack and should be sought for that reason.

On many issues, "having...debate among intelligent, trained people who have different things at stake is the best way of getting a good picture of the situation," says Appiah.

And although professors reject the argument that Black faculty automatically serve as "mentions" for Black students, many said they feel they are role models and perhaps inspiration to younger scholars.

"Precisely because there are so few Black faculty in the first place, the conception of faculty in general tends not to be a person of color, especially not a Black person," says Phillip Brian Harper, assistant professor of English and Afro-American studies.

The presence of Black faculty, say Harvard professors, disproves that preconception and shatters unhealthy stereotypes. Many say the "mentorship" role of faculty cuts across racial and gender lines and has little to do with similar appearance.

But any discussion of Black faculty members' role at Harvard returns again and again to the same refrain: their scarcity. If Black faculty are to provide an example and contribute a voice, say faculty members, there must be more than eight of them.

According to Assistant Dean for Academic Planning Joseph J. McCarthy, there are now four tenured professors and four junior professors in the Faculty. Gomes and other professors whose appointments are held jointly with other faculties, do not figure in the Faculty count. Neither do Faculty instructors or lecturers.

Hiring more minority professors is definitely a high priority, according to Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles.

"We are concerned to make our affirmative action programs really effective, and there are, indeed, some new initiatives under discussion that are aimed at increasing the number of minorities, and of women, on our faculty," Knowles says.

University affirmative-action officials attribute Harvard's small Black faculty representation to a number of factors, most prominent among them the lack of a sizeable hiring pool.

"We want both to compete for top Black scholars and also to recruit Black graduate students into out own program so as to increase the pool," says Associate Dean for Affirmative Action Marjorie Garber.

Matory attributes part of the dearth to "special financial exigencies" facing many potential minority Ph.D.'s. "It's hard to decide to go into academia when you know it's unlikely you'll earn much money for ail of the years you study," he says.

Harvard will begin trying to change the pool and attack the "pipeline problem" at its root, says Associate Vice President for Affirmative Action James Hoyte. Hoyte is formulating a new initiative on the issue scheduled to be unveiled this spring.

But even before such plans become reality, some professors say that Harvard could take other actions to improve its Black faculty representation.

Matory says Harvard's infrequent tenures of junior professors is also a deterrent for qualified candidates.

Appiah attributes the death partly to the historical legacy of racial barriers.

"If you've had systematic barriers until a period that is within the professional lives of many members of the faculty, it's not surprising that doesn't change overnight from being all white and all male," he says.

Black faculty members express concern with the potential exclusivity of the University's sources for faculty recommendations as a concern. Departments often solicit names from colleagues in other schools, and an "old boys network" of a few high-level institutions can exclude candidates from lesser-known venues.

Harper says "massive mailings to standard feeders" cannot always provide the diversity the FAS seeks.

Many times, these letters find "duplicates of the scene at Harvard," he says. "People say 'gosh, gee, I don't know any qualified minority applicants in that field.'"

"It has to do with how professional networks are established," Harper says, "and how they reproduce themselves."

Advertising in professional journals, another source of applicant names, can also miss minority applicants, some scholars say. The sometimes exclusive connotations of the Harvard name, and the low numbers of minority faculty in the FAS, send a message to minority applicants which can be overcome only by strong University encouragement, Tate says.

"It doesn't have a good reputation," she says. "I think a lot of minorities don't know what life is like at Harvard, so they just assume."

Both Tate, who arrived in 1988, and Harper, who arrived last year, recall strong recruitment efforts from their department chairs. Both got personal phone calls from the chairs of their departments asking them to apply, and neither had considered coming to Harvard before.

But if the chairs of some departments make such efforts, not all are necessarily so active. How strong a push a department makes depends on the department, not necessarily on central affirmative action authorities.

"I...do stress with each department the high desirability of seeking out minority appointments as part of our overall goal of excellence," Garber says. "All I can do is actively encourage them. It depends very much on the department."

McCarthy says one most assume that "efforts vary in all areas. Some departments have been particularly imaginative and energetic for a long time."

Tate concedes that some Harvard departments "have reputations for not being sup portive for minority scholars." She has no answer to the problem she says but it cannot be ignored.

"What I'm critical of is the fact that it's 1993, I don't really see much change, and that's depressing," she says.