The Protestors

Bob Dylan, whose name has been invoked at more than one protest, used to say that "the times are a changing."

But change comes slowly--especially at Harvard.

If the organizers of last week's Junior Parents Weekend protests didn't know that already, they found out this week.

Four of the organizers--Hyewon T. Chong '95, Asian American Association Co-President Jennifer Ching '96, Raza President Xavier A. Gutierrez '95 and Minority Students Alliance Co-Chair Jean Tom '96--walked into President Neil L. Rudenstine's office hours on Wednesday to press for more minority faculty and ethnic studies classes.

What followed was an extraordinary exchange. The four students said Harvard didn't have a diverse enough faculty or an inclusive enough curriculum. The president said he agreed.

But then the president said another thing: there is basically nothing he can do.

"It's a slow process, and from the point of view of students...very hard for them, quite understandably, to feel dramatic progress," Rudenstine said in an interview this week.

That was frustrating.

The protestors' objectives are "so difficult to implement in today's bureaucracy," Ching said this week.

Last weekend, members of campus minority groups chanted, carried signs, passed out flyers and circulated a petition in and around the Science Center, where Junior Parents Weekend panels were being held.

The protests, held on both Friday and Saturday, met with some success. An estimated 522 people--mostly parents--signed the group's petition, which calls for "increased diversity in the faculty and curriculum at Harvard" and "a pro-active policy on the part of the institution for the above stated goals."

And protestors also said they raised awareness about their agenda, which includes campaigning for permanent Asian-American studies courses, professors to teach Asian-American studies and the hiring of more minority faculty from the United States.

"I think parents were overwhelmed, and a lot of them were uninformed," Ching said. "I think we really reached a lot of people who didn't know about ethnic studies before."

But in their meeting with Rudenstine, the president indicated that it would be next to impossible for the protestors to turn this awareness into real change anytime soon.

That is because of the fact that only about 20 tenured faculty positions are open each year. Change is slow, the president said.

"When the pool is small and the numbers are small...and when there are only a tiny number of people who fit your tiny number of openings and if those people happen to be very happy where they are...it just might not be so easy to move that person," Rudenstine said.

In addition, the president said that geographical factors make it difficult for Harvard to recruit minorities, especially Hispanics who are underrepresented in New York England.

"We're willing to fight the battle," Rudenstine said. "But there's a certain number of realities out there that we have to work with."

Organizers of the protest said one reason they planned demonstrations this year was to show that they were dissatisfied with the administration's response to a similar protest during Junior Parents Weekend last year.

"Harvard is not taking a pro-active, result-oriented philosophy [toward diversity goals]," Gutierrez, the Raza president, said.

But in a statement issued last week, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) Jeremy R. Knowles indicated that despite many obstacles, Harvard is making progress in the hiring of minority faculty.

"Five of this year's 23 new assistant professors are from underrepresented minorities, despite the fact that, nationally, fewer than one in ten of recent Ph.D. recipients is a minority," he wrote.

Knowles wrote that FAS has already received junior faculty acceptances for next year from an African-American man in mathematics, an African-American woman in economics, a Hispanic man in government and an Asian-American woman in English.

"We shall not rest, but we have good reason to be encouraged by our progress," Knowles concluded.

It is unclear if this year's protestors will be able to match the momentum generated by last year's demonstration, which evolved into a group called the Coalition for Diversity.

With its Junior Parents Weekend demonstration last year, that group created a splash that this year's protestors were unable to emulate for drama and surprise. A year ago, minority student protestors dressed in black marched into a Science Center lecture hall during a junior parents panel.

Their presence turned that meeting from a polite panel on extracurricular life to a discussion session on the protestors' demands for more minority faculty and ethnic studies classes.

This year, however, word of the protest leaked out more than 24 hours before it was scheduled to begin. And while the protestors dressed in black, they did not draw as much attention as last year's group did.

This year's protest was also smaller: 100 students crashed Junior Parents Weekend last year, but only about 25 minority students participated this time. And while last year's protests were disruptive, this year's version barely bothered the organizers.

"While I would prefer that the protests wouldn't have happened, things did turn out okay in the end," Junior Parents Weekend Co-Coordinator Richard D. Gardner '95 said. "The two events did co-exist peacefully.

Despite the somewhat tepid response, organizers say they intend to press their grievances further. Tom, the MSA co-chair, said this week that the group will write a letter to parents of minority students to let them know about its concerns and ask for support.

The letter will state that parents should write to President Rudenstine to express their feelings about diversity issues, according to Tom.

The students will also launch a campaign to educate the Harvard community about their concerns. As part of this campaign, they will put up posters around campus with statistics about the number of faculty from different ethnic groups.

But while they have fewer participants than the Coalition for Diversity, this year's group of protestors is in some ways better positioned to make a long-term impact on University policy.

Tom said she is optimistic that minority organizations will work better together under the auspices of the MSA. Last spring's Coalition for Diversity faded a few months after its formation partly because the individuals who founded it had divergent agendas.

"One difference between the coalition and what we have this year is that we have...the MSA calling and facilitating meetings," Tom said, "whereas I heard the coalition had structural problems."