A Choice Between Two Futures

AT THE KENNEDY SCHOOL of Government:, where policies change with glacial speed, it has been an unusual four months.

On October 16 Gloria Bernheim emerged from the Boston offices of the Department of Labor and told reporters she had charged the school with ignoring federal affirmative action codes. Since then, a series of groups has pressured the school to step up its lagging affirmative action efforts, with virtually no success.

Within hours of the initial complaint--filed by Bernheim on behalf of the Women's Equity Action League (WEAL), a nationwide women's group--more than 80 K-School alumni released a letter supporting WEAL. The petition labeled the school's dearth of tenured women or minorities "shocking." Implicit was their assumption that Harvard's public policy school should lead--not la in--the national campaign for genuine affirmative action.

Over the next two months, increasing numbers of K-School students joined the chorus, demanding sweeping policy changes. They won support from many faculty--as well as membership on the school's three admissions committees. And last month, WEAL brought its complaints before the Senate's Labor and Human Resources committee is Washington, receiving sympathetic responses from chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and Edward M. Kennedy '54 (D-Mass.).

WEAL and the students repeatedly stressed that the school boasted no women or minorities among its 22 tenured professors last term. They noted that among junior faculty--associate and assistant professors--it sported but one female assistant professor (on leave this term) and no minorities. They pointed out that this year's graduating class from the school's Master of Public Policy (MPP) program, its premier graduate school program, features two minorities among its 60 students.

WEAL cited figures showing that women compose 19.8 per cent of the approximately 500 students in the school, a proportion that pales in comparison to the 30.6 per cent of the University of Texas' Lyndon Baines Johnson School, the 38 per cent of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School, and the 52.3 per cent of the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute. WEAL charged that these startling statistics--coupled with its failure to contact minority or women's groups and to expand its employment advertising to minority and women's lackadaisical search for minority women scholars. In short, it was a powerful case.

FOR ALL THE FIREWORKS, the very people at whom the charges were aimed--school administrators--haven't taken WEAL or the students seriously. Realizing the Department of Labor won't fine the school in gross violation of flaccid affirmative action laws, they have skirted the issue, dishing out occasional tidbits of reform to pacify student activists and federal investigators without really changing anything. They have sought refuge under charges that WEAL's statistics are inaccurate--ignoring that even the school's slightly amended figures give it a shamefully small minority and woman population. They have hidden behind claims that they made "serious offers" of faculty posts to five anonymous women (who declined the "offers")--failing to see that ineffectual "good faith" efforts to attract scholars won't change the school's stodgy white-male outlooks.

Despite this uninspiring performance, the school will almost certainly secure the Department of Labor's blessing. Administrator's grudging steps in the last months--increasing its employment advertising, seating a handful of students on admissions committees, and hiring its first woman associate professor (Mary Jo Bane) and four low-level minority instructors--will likely satisfy the department's "goodfaith" requirement.

So it's not surprising that WEAL sources now fear Harvard will "slip through" departmental scrutiny. The battle for true affirmative action at the K-school will not be won through the Department of Labor, WEAL and the students increasingly recognize, and they vow to continue pressuring the school for more than token gestures in the "post-complaint" era. It will be a hard fight.

BUT PRESSURE, and in large doses, is sorely needed to rid the school of its white male preponderance and its flouting of the spirit of affirmative action statutes. K-School administrators may not consciously discriminate--it's hard to picture Graham Allison, Hale Champion, and Ira Jackson huddling in some remote office at night conspiring to keep women or Blacks out.

Theirs is a subtle, unknowing form of discrimination--an insidious discrimination bred of ignorance. They fail to realize how a white-male environment dominated by old-school views can limit the outlook of students being trained to become national leaders.

Theirs is an unappreciation for affirmative action that stands in stark contrast to other schools' outlooks. At the Woodrow Wilson School an assistant admissions director hotes that "all kinds of diversity make a university a richer place--in terms of minorities, or women, or foreign students, or whatever. At the Wilson School, we try to get as good a diversity of backgrounds as possible."

Theirs is an unawareness that led Jackson, associate dean of the K-School, to express surprise in December when a student group, including many white males, suggested that an admissions process that accepted more Blacks and women would broaden the perspectives of all students.

Theirs is an ignorance of the impact of faculty members' offhand remarks, like the Native American joke one professor opened his course with last year, a gesture that prompted a handful of students to walk out.

Theirs is a disregard of the damage they do every time they refuse to change their subtly discriminatory teaching modes, which include the use of case studies that unfailingly depict welfare recipients as women or Blacks and government administrators as white males.

ABOVE ALL, theirs is a grossly shortsighted view of the school's mission. Its highly econometric approach to public policy frequently precludes meaningful classroom discussion of ethical issues and fails to inculcate an appreciation for affirmative action policies. Its extremely quantitative admissions and curricula requirements dissuade many minorities and women from applying--and spur a vicious circle that keeps out faculty and students who don't happen to be quantitatively gifted white males.

Its orientation of priorities away from affirmative action concerns assures that the leaders the school trains will have limited exposure to women or minorities in any capacity other than "welfare recipient." That's a scary thought about students who will someday be making the decisions that set the course of national policy.

The K-School's narrow outlook was exemplified two months ago when a student group urged the school to hire a full-time recruiter for minority students and to institute a mandatory day-long seminar for faculty on eliminating instances of "institutional racism and sexism," like the case study biases. Expressing "sympathy," administrators nonetheless cited "financial considerations" as making the steps impossible. At the same time, the school was well on the way to raising the $5 million it needs to break ground for its new building, scheduled a mere two years after work ended on its current habitat. The "need" for money had become a convenient and oft-used excuse for administrators unwilling to accept affirmative action initiatives.

Kennedy School administrators do, for the most part, seem to care about the education they provide. And, no doubt, they genuinely feel that showy expenditures--the new building, costly deans' receptions, and other expansion-related endeavors--do enhance the school's training. But until the K-School's Edifice Complex gives way to a true appreciation of the value of a racially and sexually balanced community, it will offer a lop-sided education--and will churn out leaders sadly unable to advance the cause of affirmative action in a nation that sorely needs it.