Slow Motion On a Tenure Track

The Faculty had just resumed discussion of a controversial study on minority and women faculty early this March when Harvey C. Mansfield Jr. '53 rose to speak. Talking in hushed but forceful tones, the veteran professor of Government sharply criticized the proposals put forth in the study as "a departure from our principle of equal opportunity to each individual with equal merit." Furthermore, by giving departments special opportunities to hire qualified women and minorities, as the study urged, the University would effectively "set up a category in which no white male could qualify," he said. Measures like the study suggested that give minorities or women special advantage. Mansfield argued, undermine the merit system and high standards on which the University is based--and Harvard would be wise to scrap such "bright ideas" before they damage the University's reputation and academic quality.

Mansfield was outgunned that day: though several professors joined him in assailing the study, a majority supported its calls for increased recruiting of minorities and women for junior faculty slots and for allowing departments to seek special permission to hire women and minorities for whom they do not have positions available. Shortly after the session. Dean Rosovsky set in motion the policies put forth in the study.

In fact, at the same meeting. Rosovsky had strongly defended the affirmative action policies against the salvos of Mansfield and his colleague James Q. Wilson, Shattuck Professor of Government. "It's hard to believe it's a statistical accident" that certain departments have few women scholars. Rosovsky said, Besides, he contended, the study's proposals would not hurt Harvard's standards, but merely assist qualified minorities and women in coming here. Affirmative action, as "the policy of the land and the policy of the University," was at Harvard to stay.

But the disagreement between Rosovsky and Mansfield marks a pervasive disagreement among faculty about affirmative action here, particularly in tenured posts. Explanations of why Harvard currently has only 12 tenured women and 21 tenured minorities, and what--if anything--it should be doing about it differ dramatically.

Some charge that gender discrimination--like that alleged in a grievance suit filed this year by Theda R. Skocpol, associate professor of Sociology, whose department denied her promotion to a tenured position--has blocked women from advancing into tenured posts. Women, they note, constituted 3.4 per cent of the 1979-80 Faculty (when comparative statistics were last compiled)--a figure below Michigan University's 6.8 per cent. Stanford University's 6.3 per cent, MIT's 5.2 per cent and Yale University's 4.5 per cent. Several say instances of racial discrimination have impeded minorities from gaining promotion toward tenure. In this area, statistics reveal less: in 1979-80. Harvard's 5.9-per-cent minority portion of its faculty was dwarfed only by Stanford's 8.0 per cent among selected universities, and Michigan, MIT, Princeton, and Yale all fell within 0.7 per cent of Harvard, Harvard.

Administrators like Rosovsky rely more on explanations of limited pools or women and minorities qualified for tenure. Only recently have significant numbers of women been available for academic jobs. As they have become older and more qualified, Harvard has increasingly hired them for junior faculty posts--where the number of women has steadily risen from ten in 1969-70 to 44 this year.

As these larger numbers of women gain the experience and publishing records the University expects of its tenured faculty, administrators say, more and more women will recieve tenure. Still, administrators like Nancy Randolph, special assistant to the president for affirmative action, caution that the process of assimilating women into tenured spots will be protracted and gradual. "You're not going to get a significant percentage change for many, many, many years," especially with the slow pace at which tenure spots are vacated, Randolph says. John D. Montgomery, chairman of the Government Department, also notes that many women with Ph.D's in his field now choose government posts, rendering them unavailable for academia.

This year, however, seems to offer powerful evidence of a trend towards increased tenuring of women. In the biggest rash of hiring tenured women in the University's 345-year history. Harvard appointed four female professors, who will boost the number of tenured women to an unprecedented 16 when they assume their posts July 1. That burst prompts Thomas E. Crooks, special assistant to Rosovsky for affirmative action, to cite 1980-81 as a "breakthrough year."

For minorities, though, administrators and faculty predict a less bright future in tenured slots. No comparable boom to that of women exists in academic for minorities--only two minority students in the entire Harvard class of 1980 opted for graduate work in the arts and sciences. Administrators say the declining rate at which minorities seek academic employment could eventually force the University to step up its recruiting even more just to maintain its proportion of minority faculty, especially since competing universities are also expected to respond to smaller pools by intensifying their recruitment.

On thing that almost all faculty agree on is that the University's unique method of awarding tenure influences its ability to grant it--and the likelihood of doing so. Unlike most universities. Harvard tenures faculty after an claborate process--which one professor calls "checks and balances"--that begins with departmental nominations, continues with approval by an ad hoc committee and concludes with a final go-ahead from President Bok. Deeply embedded in each stage is the notion that Harvard must maintain its high academic standards with every appointment. Research and professional esteem thus come to play a decisive factor in the selection process--particularly, faculty say, at the stage where outside experts are requested to send to a department blind letters about candidates.

This procedure, many faculty agree, helps preserve the University's reputation for appointing candidates with the most prominent reputations in their fields--and all agree that professors take seriously the task of choosing future colleagues in whom the University may invest as much as $1.5 million over time. But, say some, the process allows such broad discretion at so many stages of the tenure process that the system may lend itself to gender or race discriminations. Others argue that Harvard's reputation-heavy criteria effectively mandate the selection of older professors--and thus implicitly discriminate against qualified younger pools, where greater proportions of women are found. "There are an awful lot of women who are tenurable but are too young," one female junior faculty professor notes.

Another woman professor argues that, because of its criteria. "I don't think Harvard engages in affirmative action. They have a very high sense of themselves setting a standard of excellence--and anything that breaks that standard they won't discuss." She adds of many department members, who initiate the tenure process with their deliberations. "They argue that academic excellence is the only criterion for tenure. Things like role models and general contributions to the intellectual community are not what they see as valid." Randolph notes that though "we like to think service to the community is important... it's not going to have any importance when it comes to tenure. There is something unfair about this system."

"Myths" of an "immutable standard of excellence" are mere veneers for standards that implicitly favor the tenuring of men, one woman professor says, and others concur. Citing as "downright misogynists" the History. Anthropology, and English Departments--all of which, along with ten other departments, were "underutilizing" women, according to the University's most recent affirmative action report to the Department of Labor--one female professor argues that primarily male departments perceive values that would be desirable in a male, like assertiveness, as unappealing traits in female candidates. Randolph, too, believes that male professors are not always likely to share the interests of women candidates-making women candidates not seem "particularly valuable."

Another female professor concurs, saying that many professors "like their colleagues to be as much like themselves as possible, including gender." Others say male professors put a premium on intra department compatibility as a criterion and often view female professors as harder to get along with, as "difficult colleagues." Women are also more likely to be perceived as "risks"--and, as one female professor says. "Harvard would rather not take in people who may be stupendous than run the risk of making errors." She adds that for departments that have no women, there are probably "about two or three very special women they could chose from." Another adds, "Everything the University does is motivated by the concern to protect itself. It's a conservative, cautious institution." Accordingly, one female professor notes, junior faculty, especially female ones, must "compromise [their] behavior so much that [they] lose their identity" if they are eager to get tenure.

Some professors cite Skocpol as a female junior professor who suffered from departmental male biases. "Theda is a very good case to talk about standards," one female professor says. "Objectively she's attained all the outward trappings of it--all the external credentials, all the awards, her book's got fabulous reviews. Since she's clearly made the standards, people are pretty upset."

A harsher criticism that some faculty level is that of conscious discrimination on the part of one or more department, members during closed deliberations. Skocpol's case is the example cited most often, perhaps because alone among the candidates denied tenure, she utilized the University's grievance procedure, but some professors allude to other cases in which they say sexual discrimination may have played a role. For example, one professor in the Fine Arts Department notes that the department has chosen men to fill four of its last five tenured professorships over the last decade, although the pool of qualified personnel from which it can draw has become nearly evenly split between men and women.

Of those four male appointments, the professor says, three clearly "had the edge" in quality over competing female candidates--but in the fourth case, "the department wanted somehow a junior edition of itself." Oleg Grabar, chairman of the department, explains that the appointment in question reflected "a kind of judgement of the facts that the man was chosen was more interesting and imaginative" than the woman over whom he was chosen. He declines to identify either candidate but says that the charges that departments reproduce themselves have "some truth" in relation to gender.

Department chairmen and Rosovsky deny that there is widespread discrimination, though they acknowledge that in years past male biases did lead departments to consider only male candidates. As late as 1969-70, the Faculty still had no women, though it had several in earlier years. Among today's departments. Rosovsky says. "I do not believe it is a question of discrimination on average, but there may have been some." Nathan Glazer, professor of Education and Social Structure and an outspoken opponent of affirmative action, agrees, saying. "I am not cognizant of any discrimination on grounds of sex in Harvard appointments." One female professor, however, says she speaks for her female colleagues in saying of women professors, "You're intimidated, there's a great deal of pressure on you, you can be blacklisted--it makes it very difficult. People have to speak out."

Rosovsky points out that he meets regularly with all departments that underutilize women or minorities, particularly "to make sure searches are properly conducted"--noting for example whether departments advertise vacancies sufficiently. He denies the contention of one professor that he threatened that professor's underutilizing department by warning that if the department did not hire a women in its next appointment, he could not approve any alternative selection. "I would never say to a department that you can only appoint a person of a separate sex or color. That is not what is meant by affirmative action."

Still, some professors suggest that considerations of gender, which once acted against women in tenure discussions, now often help female candidates. In theory, Rosovsky says, affirmative action means not only giving women candidates equal opportunities, but also possibly choosing a female candidate over an equally qualified male. However, he notes. "You hardly ever have equal qualifications." Nonetheless, some professors say references to gender occasionally crop up in tenure discussions. Though most decline to give details of such deliberations, one female professor says of the colleagues who chose her, "They claim, and I'd like to believe, that my gender had nothing to do with it. But they were relieved to have filled the position with some one...who was also a woman." She adds. "When you have a department that has no women, obviously that department is discriminating."

Interestingly, the four departments that will gain a tenured woman next year--Anthropology (Sally Falk Moore). English (Marjorie Garber). Psychology and Social Relations (Ellen J. Langer, associate professor of Psych and Soc Rel), and History (Angeliki Laiou)--all were underutilizing. Department members decline to comment on whether gender played a role in those deliberations, though Rosovsky had met beforehand with the four and the underutilizing departments.

Most department chairmen deny that Skocpol's unprecedented grievance case will affect their future tenure considerations, especially since the procedures did exist previously. Some professors, however, argue that underutilizing departments will now prove more conscious of potential repercussions when considering cases of promotion. "I think people will be more careful. The administration is putting on more pressure," one professor predicts. Another, who asked not to be identified, suggests that fears of a similar incident might have made the Psych and Soc Rel Department more sympathetic to Langer in its considerations this winter. And just months after Skocpol's complaint, Josephine Wright, assistant professor of Afro-American Studies, filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission charging the University with discrimination on the basis of sex and race in denying her a one-year contract extension. But Faculty remain nearly unanimous in agreeing that the threat of external suits--like the complaint filed this fall against the Kennedy School of Government by a nationwide women's group--does not deeply affect departments in making tenure decisions.

Grabar contends that most departments will recognize the Skocpol case as an aberration, explaining that "I don't think that the department [Fine Arts] could be foolish enough to come to a formal vote as Sociology did" in failing to promote Skocpol. In response to Rosovsky's advice that the departments hire more women and to the recently-implemented minority and women faculty study, though. Grabar says Fine Arts will now stress finding strong female candidates more than identifying needy subfields in the department and then trying to find individuals to fill them. However, he cautions. "The subfields in art history in which women are prominent are less fashionable subfields."

The recent study will have little impact in increasing the proportion of tenured women and minorities, many predict. Its emphasis on more aggressive recruiting will likely pay off with additional minority and women junior faculty, they say, but will have little impact on tenured appointments.

Professors like Zvi Griliches, chairman of the Economics Department, predict that some departments may take advantage of the special permission the report grants to departments with qualified minority or woman candidate but no opening--but say this opportunity will not raise dramatically the proportions of minority or women faculty. But Griliches does note that Economics is "in the process" of considering a woman for a tenure appointment--and depending how the department decides to define the post, it could become the first department to take advantage of the new opportunity provided by the study.

Pockets of resistance, notably Mansfield, remained opposed to the proposal. "Any attempt to introduce any other factor" besides merit into tenure decisions. Mansfield says, "will quickly take us into trouble. Tenure decisions are always hard--the temptation to temper justice with charity is always there and must be fought against constantly." Considerations like potential contribution to the University community should not affect the decisions, be argues, saying that the use of such criteria "would be like choosing the Boston Celties for what they can contribute to race relations in Boston."

Nonetheless, most agree the University has improved its affirmative action status in the last several vears--in particular, hiring increasing numbers of tenured women and tightening up the tenure process to make it better able to locate and then hire qualified women and minorities. Probable demographic forces--like the maturing of age groups containing qualified women--will further serve to increase Harvard's population of tenured women.

The primary point of contention is whether Harvard should act to accelerate the assimilation of women that otherwise will occur gradually, and the incorporation of minorities that seems likely to occur even more slowly. Based on the beated debate over small steps in that direction, like the minority and women faculty study that provoked such sharp disagreement this winter, such issues seem likely to continue to spark controversy indefinitely.