Faculty Try Hard To Make Hiring Process Work Right

To the editors:

In his Feb. 22 op-ed, “Reflections of a Department Chair,” Professor Stuart Schreiber, the former chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, discusses recent efforts to enhance the department’s gender diversity.

While I appreciate his suggestion that I played a supporting role in those efforts, I want to be sure that credit goes where it is due. The new department chair, Professor Cynthia Friend, has for some years been a particularly energetic and thoughtful proponent of these efforts, not only within Chemistry and Chemical Biology but also in working closely on matters of women in science across the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) with Dean Jeremy Knowles and Dean William Kirby. Professor Friend specifically made a compelling case to me regarding the candidate discussed by Professor Schreiber, and other faculty within the Department of Chemistry were active proponents of this candidate for years prior to my involvement.

I should also point out that Professor Barbara Grosz has been a leader on issues related to women in science for many years, through such efforts as chairing the FAS Standing Committee on the Status of Women in the early 1990s when it produced an important report on the experience of female junior faculty and graduate students in the sciences at Harvard and working on an initiative in the late 1990s chaired by Professors Friend and John Dowling, and including Professors Howard Georgi and Dudley Herschbach, to help facilitate the identification, recruitment, and retention of women science faculty.

Going forward, there is much for all of us to do to ensure that Harvard advances opportunities for women in science and in academic life more generally. I continue to hope that we can draw on all the energy currently around these issues to ensure that Harvard is at the forefront of progress. The leadership of Professor Grosz, as chair of the new task force on women in science, and of Professor Friend, as chair of the chemistry department, will be critical toward that end.

LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS

March 1, 2005

The writer is president of Harvard University.