Council Seeks More Diverse IOP

A newly formed committee of Harvard students is seeking to increase diversity at the Institute of Politics by inviting a more diverse slate of speakers and fellows and encouraging greater minority participation in IOP programs.

The four-mounth-old IOP Diversity Council—created to advise the IOP’s Student Advisory Committee and the broader IOP community—aims to increase “diversity of opinions as well as racial, economic, gender and international diversity,” according to founder Honor S. W. McGee ’10.

Each Council member works with a distinct IOP program, such as the IOP forum or IOP TV, to publicize events, offer advice on appealing to a more diverse audience, and encourage racial groups to actively engage with the IOP.

Council members have also begun compiling suggested names for the IOP fellows program in the fall and plan to submit a suggested list for consideration to Program Manager Eric R. Andersen in April.

“Having more diverse forum speakers and fellows is definitely a part of this,” said Student Advisory Committee President Mary K. Cox ’10, who works closely with members of the Council. “In the long term, what we really want is to have the general body of the active participants of the IOP to be more diverse.”

Representatives on the Council include Timothy D. Turner ’09, president of the Black Students Association, as well as the political action chairs from the Chinese Students Association, the Black Pre-Law Association, and the South Asian Men’s Collective, according to Cox, who said around a dozen students regularly attend the meetings held once every two weeks.

Cox said the IOP has engaged in diversity initiatives before, but that McGee’s plan represents a distinct approach. “Honor gets the IOP and she gets the racial and cultural groups around campus,” Cox said. “She knows how to bring them together.”

McGee participated in the IOP’s Women’s Initiative in Leadership program last fall, while also serving as political action chair for the Association of Black Harvard Women. She said the experience prompted her to think about ways in which the IOP might work to increase participation from groups on campus.

“I’m black, Jewish, and female, so any kind of diversity is something that I appreciate,” McGee said.

She said she approached IOP Director and former Nashville Mayor Bill Purcell late last fall with the idea for a council, and he responded enthusiastically.

“As Mayor, I always said that the government should look and feel like the place in which it operates,” Purcell said. “I brought that feeling with me here.”

McGee said she hopes to expand the Council’s representation to include ethnic, political, and LGBT groups in the next few months. She also said she hopes to institutionalize the role of campus organization in the Council by automatically adding their political advocacy chairs to the group.

—Staff writer Evan T. R. Rosenman can be reached at erosenm@fas.harvard.edu