A Round With the Members

This week, the Association of Black Harvard Women (ABHW) rightfully called for Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow James R. Houghton ’58, Corporation member and Harvard Treasurer D. Ronald Daniel and former Senior Fellow and current Harvard Management Company Director Robert G. Stone Jr. ’45 to issue letters reaffirming their commitment to diversity. The demand comes in light of their membership in the Augusta National Golf Club, which came under criticism this fall for its policy excluding women from membership, and coincides with several national groups’ calls for Augusta members to withdraw from the club.

While Augusta National’s regulations are perfectly legal, the club’s exclusion of women preserves the tradition of limiting golf clubs—and the related schmoozing at places like Augusta—exclusively to men. At Augusta, if women are present, they are only there as guests. This undermines efforts to diversify the corporate elite: even if women and men work together in the board room, the deals made on Augusta’s golf course and in its back rooms are largely made between men. Essentially, the personal relationships forged between members at the club carry over to their professional dealings, and exclude women.

The struggle to diversify the corporate world has paralleled efforts to diversify higher education and particularly elite institutions like Harvard. For centuries, Harvard served to educate exclusively a white male upper class. Women and people of color are still a small minority among tenured faculty, and the curriculum still frequently comes under attack for offering a Eurocentric, masculine, upper-class perspective. The Harvard Corporation itself has long been a bastion of traditional corporate homogeneity; in its history it has had only two women and one person of color among its members.

While it is inappropriate to assume that, as members of Augusta, Houghton, Daniels and Stone are necessarily opposed to diversity, their membership does represent their alignment with an exclusionary club. Harvard, as an institution run by people belonging to that club, suffers by association. To counter the shadow cast on our University those members should publicly reaffirm their commitment to diversity and openness, particularly within institutions that have traditionally been insular clubs for the elite.

Dissent: Worthless Campaign of Harassment

The entire campaign to force Augusta National Golf Club into admitting female members is absurd. Augusta is a private club, and is thus free to craft whatever membership policies it chooses. The Staff’s shrill complaints are misguided and irritating: people should be free to associate with whomever they choose without obnoxious criticism from newspaper editors.

The current petition drive being led by a host of campus women’s groups, is harassment, plain and simple. The past and present members of the Harvard Corporation in question—D. Ronald Daniel, James R. Houghton ’58 and Robert G. Stone Jr. ’45—have done nothing in their professional lives, so far as we can tell, that would indicte them as bigots. The Staff applauds the Association of Black Harvard Women for sending the right message to these individuals, but it is, in fact, absurd to ask anyone for a written statement of their commitment to diversity without any evidence of wrongdoing or intolerance. We’d encourage the women’s groups involved to rethink their attack on Daniel, Houghton and Stone. It is doomed to the failure that such an ethically ridiculous initiative deserves.

—Duncan M. Currie ’04, Anthony S.A. Freinberg ’04,

Noam B. Katz ’04 and Rahul Rohatgi ’03