Race Relations: 150 Pages and More

As the Class of 1980 readied for graduation, the College released a 150-page report examining undergraduate race relations. Issued shortly before the Miami, Fla. race riots broke out, the report concluded that in spite of improvements, prejudices among students still existed.

Two years in the making, the report also encouraged the College to step up its efforts in recruiting minority faculty and students—a recommendation that came at a time when the Department of Afro-American Studies was widely identified as a trouble spot.

Today, Harvard’s campus continues to debate these issues of minority recruitment and race relations—in House dining halls, in classrooms, during official forums, and in University Hall.

MINORITY REPORT

The Spring 1977 cover of the Lampoon featured a drawing of a black person shining the shoes of the John Harvard statue, the Crimson reported in February 1977.

The Harvard-Radcliffe Black Students Association (BSA) called this and other caricatures “racially insensitive.”

On the heels of these complaints, then-Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III formed a 16-member committee of students, faculty members, and administrators.

The Committee on Race Relations aimed to determine how Harvard would shape students’ racial perceptions, examine the pattern of interaction among white and minority students, and issue recommendations to improve race relations at the College.

To guide their efforts, the committee led a series of focus groups and administered an exhaustive, 251-question survey that elicited responses from about 1,300 students, or roughly 22 percent of undergraduates.

“We were trying to make a real assessment of what race relations was like in Harvard in the late ’70s,” says committee member T. Jake Liang ’80. “The committee tried to assess how much progress we had made and what issues we still had to address.”

The report indicated that distorted perceptions—not separatism—were responsible for problems with race at Harvard.

It concluded that one out of every five students questioned the academic abilities of minorities, that many undergraduates doubted the College’s commitment to affirmative action, and that students perceived more students to be prejudiced than faculty or staff.

But committee member Eugene A. Matthews ’80 describes the racial problems of 1980 as the result of self-segregation rather than overt racial tensions.

“Every individual was different, but a lot of people in the Freshman Union would sit in the springtime with their own ethnic group,” Matthews recalls. “There was no tension on campus, nor was there any preventative collaboration between races. I’ve never heard of any racial problem or any physical violence based on that respect.”

Along with its findings, the Committee on Race Relations also issued 13 recommendations, suggesting that courses on race relations be incorporated into the Core Curriculum and that affirmative action admissions be increased.

But members of Third World organizations expressed skepticism that the report’s recommendations would be implemented, especially in light of Harvard’s consistent lack of support for institutional change.

“Third World,” a term that referred to minority students at the time, was a deliberate reference to the 1955 Bandung Conference, where 29 African and Asian nations joined together to promote unity and decolonization, Peter N. Kiang ’80, who was involved in the Third World Center Coalition during his time at Harvard, writes in an e-mail.

“We’ll just have to put pressure on the University to implement them,” former BSA President Eugene J. Green ’80 told the Crimson in 1980. “The University has not shown a willingness to address these problems for years.”

ATTRACTING MINORITY FACULTY

Just as today’s African and African-American Studies department struggles to retain its star professors—many of whom have left Harvard over the last several years—the department faced similar problems back in 1980.

To address this issue, the report proposed that the College intensify its efforts to hire minority staff and faculty.

In an attempt to bolster the Afro-American studies department, then-Dean of the Faculty Henry A. Rosovsky formed an Afro-Am Studies executive committee that sought to strengthen the department in the fall of 1979.

But as the Class of 1980 approached graduation, “all but two chairs remain vacant in 77 Dunster St., the Afro-Am Department building,” The Crimson wrote in its June 5 issue.

In 1980, only Nathan I. Huggins—one of three historians offered tenure to the Af Am department—signed a contract.

The BSA, dissatisfied with the disproportionately low number of black faculty candidates, pushed for a multi-disciplinary committee to increase the number of minority appointments in the faculty.

Partly in response to the BSA, Rosovsky announced plans to investigate potential reasons for the shortage of minority faculty on campus.

MINORITY STUDENT CONCERNS

Coupled with concerns about minority faculty recruitment, undergraduates also questioned the role of minority students on campus.

Responding to pressure from members of Third World organizations, who sought a center that would cater specifically to their needs, then-University President Derek C. Bok formed a committee to investigate this idea.

“We were demanding that if Harvard is going to recruit a diverse student body, it has to feel good for students to be there,” Kiang explains. “That means we have to feel like ourselves, comfortable, strong, like we’re not there for the benefit of others.”

A year later, the committee proposed the creation of the Harvard Foundation for Cultural and Race Relations, an organization that strives to promote cultural awareness.

But some members of the Third World organizations said at the time that the foundation, which still exists, failed to address their initial goals.

“The mission of the foundation was to...have students of color be representative and be ambassadors of their cultural groups,” Kiang explains. “In that framework, students of color were expected to help white students become more aware and sensitive. That’s a fine goal, but that’s not the goal we were demanding that Harvard address.”

Kiang attributes the necessity of such an “infrastructure of support” to the “tokenized” role of minorities on campus.

“Students of color were either completely neglected or marginalized,” he says.

He points to instances of discrimination and insensitivity among student groups like The Crimson and the Hasty Pudding. The Crimson, Kiang says, published a story about a prison riot in New Mexico. The accompanying photo that ran was of African-American students at Harvard with bars superimposed to represent prisoners.

And the Hasty Pudding’s theatrical production featured a racist caricature of a Chinese person, Kiang says.

“These were the mainstream instances,” Kiang says. “It was obvious at that time anyway that the realities of people of color and the presence of people of color on campus made no difference. It was amazing that stuff like that could happen.”

LINGERING QUESTIONS

Matthews recalls filling out his freshmen rooming questionnaire, which at the time asked that students indicate whether or not they would mind living with someone of a different race.

While rooming forms today ask instead about music and tidiness preferences, both alums and current students continue to assess how far Harvard has come in terms of addressing minority issues.

Adela M. Cepeda ’80, a former member of the Committee on Race Relations, contends that race relations have seen significant improvement.

“I think race was more of an issue because there was more class differentiations than, I would say, today,” she says. “For example, my daughter is at Harvard today. She can kind of fit in anywhere there. So the fact that she’s black or Hispanic or anything doesn’t make as much of a difference.”

Looking back on her own experiences, Cepeda says the administration has always been willing to invest its academic and administrative resources, even helping her jump-start a forum on Latino politics at the Institute of Politics while she was an undergraduate.

But Kiang paints a different picture of the College, which he says still has neither made enough of an effort to incorporate cultural awareness into its curriculum nor funneled its resources in that direction.

“About a dozen of us, upon graduation, we made a pledge to not donate as alumni to Harvard, at least the College, until we felt that issues, especially in the curriculum, had been addressed in substantial ways,” Kiang says. “I have every year have had to say that to the people calling me asking for donations, because I still don’t feel that, especially in terms of the Asian American studies, there’s anything after all those years.”

And Kiang, as Director of Asian American Studies at University of Massachusetts at Boston, says he regularly fields requests from Harvard students soliciting resources for Asian-American studies.

“Harvard students call me asking for resources for Asian American studies, and it’s just so ironic,” he adds.

—Staff writer Margaret W. Ho can be reached at mwho@fas.harvard.edu.