Behind Harvard's Liberal Veneer

CORPORATIONS CALL IT "top-down" decision-making. It's fast, it's efficient and it gets the job done. At Harvard, people like President Derek C. Bok and Vice President Daniel Steiner '54 are in the driver's seat. They know the most and are therefore most qualified to make the important decisions, right?

Wrong.

Not only is Harvard's decision-making process often paternalistic, it is also frequently ineffective. The recent controversy surrounding Harvard's South African Internship Program highlights the University's institutional and hierarchical arrogance. But the Internship Program fiasco is only one in a long line of decision-making blunders--foul-ups that have embarrassed Harvard and exposed the ruthless corporate attitude underlying Harvard's liberal veneer.

The way in which bars were installed over the Leverett House heating vents, the way in which Harvard often thrusts its real estate plans on the Cambridge community, and the way the Administration ignores student input in most University appointments are symptomatic of the misconception that "Harvard knows best."

HARVARD'S SOUTH AFRICAN Internship Program was started in the same way as most other major projects at Harvard: Bok formed a committee. His instructions to the committee seemed benign. He instructed them to "find the programs that Black South Africans want." Ironically, during the first six months that the committee met, there is no evidence that they spoke with any Black South Africans, at Harvard or in South Africa.

Had the committee contacted leaders in the United Democratic Front, or the South African Council of Churches, they would have discovered that many Black South Africans feel that the presence of Harvard interns would merely encourage the inherently flawed notion of constructive engagement. According to the African National Congress's representative to the United Nations, "those people who claim they are going to South Africa in order to change its educational system, wittingly or not, only succeed in sabotaging the cultural boycott and helping apartheid to break its international isolation."

Harvard should be faulted not only for its intention to send students to exclusive private schools or to South African government-sponsored organizations, but also for its decision-making attitude. Rather than ask what help Black South Africans want, a couple of people on the Steiner committee have taken it upon themselves to decide how they think Black South Africans should be helped.

THE GRATES WHICH blocked off the heating vents were installed on the whim of someone high-up in the Leverett House hierarchy. No students were consulted and none of the homeless people were warned. If the House master was really concerned about security, why didn't he meet with house residents to discuss the problem and the other issues--such as the poor outdoor lighting, and the fact that late at night, the dining hall door is locked, forcing students to take a longer route from McKinlock to the Leverett towers?

Harvard Real Estate (HRE) and the Harvard Planning Office are also examples of Harvard's paternalistic way of dealing with the community. HRE has always shunned tenant input into its major decisions, and they continue to ignore the activist Harvard Tenants Union. The Planning Office consistently excludes community members from the initial phases of all major building constructions and modifications. Instead, they ask for input only after the first set of plans have been drafted, thus giving community members a foregone conclusion which they can only modify in a minor way.

University appointments are another area in which the administration assumes it knows more than students. The selection of the Dean of the College and of all faculty appointments is done without any official student input. Currently, a committee of faculty and administrators is in the process of selecting a new Dean of Admissions and Financial Aids. Again, students are deemed unknowledgeable or too inexperienced for the complex task.

Why does Harvard routinely shun the input of those who will be affected by its decisions? Often, Harvard is simply afraid of hearing their suggestions. It's easier to rule from above than to listen to the wishes of those below. One of the few times when Harvard does stoop down and lend its ear to the underlings is when it chooses new house masters. The Dean of the College meets with house residents, and students participate on the master selection committee. Such an outrageously progressive decision-making process should serve as a model for major appointment decisions, and other choices that affect the University's community, its neighbors, and those in far-away places who it decides to take under its wing.